Normal [Hardcover]

Lucia Nevai (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 4, 1997

You won't find storybook families in these twelve wonderfully daring stories by Lucia Nevai. Over and over, Nevai's characters, from an urbane ex-hippie in Manhattan to a disabled war veteran in rural Louisiana, miss in their attempts to connect with the people they love most. But in the midst of all the missed connections, something remarkable (and often very funny) happens. In the tradition of Amy Bloom, Ellen Gilchrist, and Francine Prose, Nevai brings us unforgettable families in twelve versions of "normal" that we can all recognize. "Skewed and shrewd, Ms. Nevai makes a delightful tour guide to the fallout of the nuclear family."--The New York Times Book Review; "A writer of uncommon potency and reach."--Publishers Weekly, starred; "Nevai is a real talent with a ready wit and a steady gaze."--Kirkus Reviews.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The cover of Lucia Nevai's collection of short stories, Normal, is a simple silhouette of a perfect family, circa 1950s: man, woman, and child hold hands and stare off into a clip-art sunset. In the pages beneath this idyllic image, the concept of normal takes on new meaning. For the characters of Nevai's 12 tales, it is simply one more stop along the road, quite a ways past wildly dysfunctional but not so far from merely unhappy. Take the main character of "Belief." Young Maureen is a not-so-happy camper at Methodist camp. With her father in jail and her mother at a disconnected phone number, the little girl exercises the only control she has, cutting her own body over and over again with a Swiss army knife. In "Quinn's Wedding," the celebration of a marriage is somewhat dampened by the bride's addiction to cocaine and her father's history of incest with her sister.

Weddings, funerals, Thanksgiving meals--these are the battlefields on which Nevai's characters struggle to define themselves and to connect with the people they love most but most often do not understand. Nobody in Normal is normal, but Nevai makes sure everybody has some share of sympathy, wit, and dignity.

From Library Journal

Nevai's second collection of short stories (following Star Game, Univ. of Iowa, 1987) demonstrates why she has received the Iowa Short Fiction Award as well as the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. Expertly conveying the inevitable tensions of human interactions, Nevai demonstrates in these 12 stories wonderful insight into the existence of truly "normal" people. Her characters experience intimations of alienation without losing hope or humor. Readers will feel compassion and amusement for the persistent self-mutilator Maureen of "Belief," who explains her wounds as "little interruptions I could control and still prove the point that I was here." It's been too long since Nevai's last collection. Highly recommended.?Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of Oregon, Eugene
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 217 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1st edition (January 4, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565121589
• ISBN-13: 978-1565121584
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,983,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lucia Nevai is the author of Seriously, a novel, published by Little, Brown. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House, Iowa Review, Zoetrope All-Story, the New Yorker, Glimmer Train, and other literary magazines. Her first collection, Star Game, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her second collection, Normal, was published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. A native of Des Moines, Iowa, she lives in upstate New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars American as Apple Pie with Chile Peppers, July 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Normal (Hardcover)

Normal is a very American book, its subject the American family. The book is about families and their problems, families normal and not so normal. In some way every story in the book has to do with an ideal of normalcy, success, happiness, against which Nevai measures the lives of her characters. And how do these American fictional characters measure up?

On a first reading, the gap between 'normal' and the often dysfunctional lives of Nevai's characters springs to the fore, due in part to Nevai's edgy humor, aphoristic writing and ability to evoke startling vignettes within vignettes (she can create a whole scene within a sentence, yet keep that scene within her peripheral vision as she deftly steers the story front and center). But this is a book with staying power, and what I discovered with further reading is that many of her characters are 'normal'. That is, in an unexpected sense, they do measure up to whatever ideal that is out there haunting their actions.

True, Nevai's families are all-American in their rushed, stressed-out, hyped-up, competitive modernity, and her characters can find family life tentative, disappointing and rootless. Yet one of the things these characters seek, and sometimes get from their families is, well, character. And it is character of a particularly American sort. In "The Talking Woman" - which has to be the best mid-life crisis short story ever written - Vic dreams of the men of his father's generation "who had more character in their little fingers than a whole corporate division had today." In "Thanksgiving with Dorrie and Heck", Willa's character is disclosed in a burst of improvisation, when she decides "to reveal her breaking heart instead of passing her torture off as fun even as the rack is turning."

Nevai's social commentary is astute and her characterizations are unsentimental. At the same time, her characters are full of heart and fumbling hopefulness.

The stories are brilliantly written, entertaining, visual, with a wry humor.You can read the stories for diversion. You can read them for fun.You can read them for insight about contemporary American culture. And you can read them again and be surprised, be moved and informed by Nevai's take on the human plight.

Nevai is alert to her characters' difficulties and eccentricities, to the wounds inflicted on them, and to the healing life offers, sometimes gratuitously.

4.0 out of 5 stars Define Normal ??, December 9, 2000

By 

Jenny - See all my reviews

This review is from: Normal (Hardcover)

I was enchanted by the book title and the nice 'happy family' picture on the book cover. Plus the fact that they are stories,12 of them.

12 Stories about everyday...touched on issues close to our hearts like life,death,wedding and Thanksgiving etc.. Each one of them tell a story or situation of the characters ,each have their own moral behind.

The whole idea was like a breath of fresh air and Lucia Nevai's writing style creditable and the stories were less than normal. Extraordinary descriptions of how people feel,react and uphold the 'normal' image and attitude of dysfunctional lives.

I think Nevai choose a perfect title for her book because it refelcted the ironies and illustrate through her stories how being normal are not at all an easy task.

5.0 out of 5 stars Nevai makes the most dysfunctional among us feel justified., July 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Normal (Hardcover)

What a refreshing look at the thoughts and actions of "normal" people in everyday situations. This is NOT "Leave it to Beaver" or Martha Stewerts Manual for Living. It is instead a real look at life and how we, as the ultimate individual, non-logical, and slightly dysfunctional human handle our emotions and challenges. A breath of Fresh air in a library filled with blown smoke.