{"product_id":"like-normal-people-9780618126927","title":"Like Normal People","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBender has crafted a luminous, meditative novel on the boundaries between childhood, adulthood, and old age.\" -\u003cem\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA tour de force of literary craft and emotional resonance, \u003cem\u003eLike Normal People\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCovering three entire lifetimes in the course of one day, \u003cem\u003eLike Normal People \u003c\/em\u003eis 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. \u003cem\u003eLike Normal People\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKaren Bender's powerfully affecting first novel has garnered remarkable early attention. Portions of the novel have been published in \u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker, Granta\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eStory \u003c\/em\u003emagazine. An excerpt chosen for \u003cem\u003eThe Best American Short Stories\u003c\/em\u003e by Annie Proulx was recorded by Joanne Woodward and aired on NPR's Selected Shorts.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBender, Karen:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cp\u003eKaren E. Bender's novel excerpts have been published in THE NEW YORKER, GRANTA, and STORY magazines. The chapter \"Eternal Love\" was chosen by Annie Proulx to appear in THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 1997, and was read by Joanne Woodward to a sold-out crowd at Symphony Space in New York; the recording of that reading aired on NPR's SELECTED SHORTSS. Bender also received a prestigious Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award based on a draft of this novel. Bender's fiction has appeared in the IOWA REVIEW and the KENYON REVIEW and has been reprinted in PUSHCART PRIZE XVIII and other anthologies. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she lives in New York with her husband, the writer Robert Anthony Siegel, and their son.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ecco Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51749291294994,"sku":"9780618126927","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_f18988a5-24c5-4976-a40c-24a9f3a95b55.jpg?v=1764075744","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/like-normal-people-9780618126927","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}