Like Normal People, Karen E. Bender
Like Normal People, Karen E. Bender
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Like Normal People

Author: Karen E. Bender

Narrator: Alyssa Bresnahan

Unabridged: 10 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 05/06/2016


Synopsis

A tour de force of literary craft and emotional resonance, Like Normal People charts a family constellation that revolves around an off-kilter center: Lena, who is forty-eight but mentally locked in childhood. Moving deftly between present and past, the novel follows Lena's day-long escape from her residential home with her troubled twelve-year-old niece. While this odd couple takes refuge on a honky-tonk southern California beach, Lena's widowed mother, Ella, goes in search of them. In the process, Ella relives her own life's dreams and disappointments: her marriage to a sweet, loving shoe salesman; her discovery of Lena's handicap and her aching attempts to give her daughter a "normal" childhood. For so long, Lena has been the focus of Ella's world. When Lena at last finds approximate normalcy - by marrying a man much like herself - Ella must contend with letting her daughter go. Covering three entire lifetimes in the course of one day, Like Normal People is tender, often hilarious, and deeply moving. Bender brilliantly enters into the consciousness of three women at very different stages of life, each on a private search for love and acceptance. Like Normal People is a novel about desire, about what constitutes normality, and, most poignantly, about the ways in which a family finds its strength in the face of adversity.

About Karen E. Bender

Karen E. Bender is the author of Refund, a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction, short-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and long-listed for the Story Prize. She is also the author of the novels Like Normal People and A Town of Empty Rooms. She is the Visiting Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Hollins University.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Katie on July 22, 2014

I have such a hard time understanding how anyone could give this book less than 5 stars. It captured me wholly. I was completely engrossed in the characters and the slow description of their lives. I found them so uniquely interesting, and Karen Bender's imagery is so beautiful and thought provoking......more

Goodreads review by Joan on September 09, 2013

The premise of this novel was promising. A married couple Ella and Lou. Their daughters, Lena who is retarded and Vivian who is normal. Vivian’s daughter Shelley. Ella and Lou despair over Lena’s future. Lena falls in love and marries Bob, a retarded man who works with her at Goodwill. Lou and Ella......more

Goodreads review by Jane on June 19, 2024

Such a surprising and uplifting read. A study of love really - how we love those in our lives in different ways, according to their needs and the shape of our hearts, how we have space enough for everyone. For all those of us who have been fortunate enough to have 'normal' children, who have walked t......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on February 04, 2010

Very moving, with well imagined characters and incredible description that only occasionally goes on too long.......more

Goodreads review by Rhonda on December 05, 2024

I came across this book by accident and immediately was drawn to the characters, especially the mother, Ella and her differently abled daughter, Lena. I connected with Ella, the mother, as I have a 38 year old daughter with special needs. This story was both heart wrenching and heart warming as Ella......more