Customer Reviews

The Normals: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this book without ever having heard of the author, on the basis of the premise alone, which I thought was terrific. I knew I was in trouble on page one, when he referred to a small stack of boxes as a Frankenstein's monster. Uh-oh. A Clever Guy. He knows how to use metaphors, he just doesn't know how to use them well. It only gets worse from there; one can actually watch the author struggle to bend the prose around in order to describe things for which he's thought up clever things to say. Trouble is, the many, many, MANY descriptions, always weighted down with surprisingly terrible metaphors, don't provide any insight, only distractions.

I found myself almost shouting at the book at times; for example, the sentence: "Mirages from earlier times-bakeries and butchers mostly-float between handbag boutiques and restaurants. "Really?" I thought. "The bakeries and butchers FLOAT?" But fine, I'll overlook that one too if we can just get to the plot. Maybe when he has to make the character DO something, he'll stop doing that. I don't know if he ever did get around to writing the actual book or if I quit it with several hundred more pages of leaden adjectives yet to come, but I gave up on page 46. I just couldn't take it. Shame, too. It's such an interesting premise. Somebody should write a book that uses it.

I discovered David Gilbert's THE NORMALS by chance and picked it up with delicious anticipation based on its story premise. Billy Schine is a drifting and disaffected young man, as distant from his Asian girlfriend as he is from his parents, college educated but working as a temp, buried under $60,000 worth of student loans - a "normal"GenXer. In a misguided effort to evade a knee-breaking collection agency, he enrolls as a human guinea pig in a paid pharmaceutical research project for Hargrove Anderson Medical (HAM). Along with a dozen other people, Billy commits to a paid, two-week study in which the physical and psychological effects of an unspecified drug will be carefully monitored to establish its baseline impact on the unsick, the "normals."

Given this premise, an infinite range of possibilities blossoms before one's eyes. Could THE NORMALS be another ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, with every subject saner than Randall McMurphy (Jack Nicholson's character in the movie)? Could it be an exploration of the irrelevance of the concept of normalcy in modern society? An attempt to redefine it? Or maybe it could be an examination of the role of pharmaceuticals in a grossly over-medicated society? Or a treatise of the ethical quandaries of drug testing, or their misuse and manipulation?

So many choices, none taken. Mr. Gilbert, inarguably a gifted crafter of cutting sarcasm and a wonderfully clever wordsmith, opted instead to surround his Everyman with a carnival sideshow of dysfunctional characters and a bizarre plot twist that moves his story from comic cynicism to outlandish science fiction. Billy Schine's "normal" colleagues turn out to be freakish stereotypes: a lone female striking a nymphomaniac's pose, an religious zealot named Jay ("Do") Rami who suffers from violent impulses and refuses to bathe, a pair of thuggish droolers named Ossap and Dullick who ultimately reveal a bizarre political agenda, a self-styled acting genius named Lannigan who shaves his entire body, and a misfit named Frank Gershin whose hobby involves paying exorbitant sums to have gunshot wounds inflicted upon himself (body piercing and cutting apparently having given way to stronger stimuli). Billy befriends a black version of Nurse Rached who, like all similarly stereotyped black women, really has a heart of gold (her name is Joy, naturally) beneath that gruff exterior. He also discovers that the doctor in charge of monitoring and administrating these studies, Honeysack, is also an absurdly unlikely researcher into cryogenics who is looking for a volunteer. Combine all this with the simultaneous saga of Billy's father's imminent plan for a double suicide of himself and his Alzeihmer's-afflicted wife, and the entire brew makes the cast of characters from Gilligan's Island the The Addam's Family look like "the normals."

The dissolution of Gilbert's premise and plot line is particularly disappointing when set beside his estimable writing talent. His prose is sparklingly pyrotechnic, filled with wonderful observations and memorable turns of phrase that make you want to dog ear every page and highlight for future recall. Gilbert's writing alone makes this book a worthwhile read, and it promises the hope for deeper and more meaningful things to come.

Good satire can be entertaining and funny when it has a point. The problem with THE NORMALS is that it's only point seems to be that there is no point, that life is simply too absurd to take anything seriously. This is fine as the world view for an eighteen-year-old adolescent, but it's simply not the stuff of good literature. The book's paperback cover cites an irresponsibly lavish quote from Publisher's Weekly, "Gilbert writes in the vein of Vonnegut, Heller, and Kesey, updated for the 21st Century." If THE NORMALS is 21st Century Vonnegut, woe betide us for the next ten decades. Readers in 2099 will still be celebrating Mr. Vonnegut's genius, but by then, THE NORMALS will have faded to dusty yellowed parchment -- or its digital equivalent.

Gilbert is a very bright and able writer. I had read the reviews for "The Normals" and liked the premise very much - overeducated New Yorker, up to his eyeballs in debt, decides to get out of town and participate in a risky drug study.

The problem is Gilbert feels compelled to describe everything in copious detail. This gets so bad that it slows down the story. Some of his observations are dead-on and I laughed hard. However, most of the time I felt he was trying too hard.

The ending was terrible and I skimmed the last 40 pages.

I hear good things about "Remote Feed" and will try that next. Gilbert needs to relax and just let the story flow a bit more. Hopefully the next novel he writes will be his "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" or "Motherless Brooklyn." He certainly has the talent.

I loved Gilbert's "Remote Feed" and was eager to read this novel, but by pg. 140 I simply couldn't continue. The wise-guy prose, the elaborate language describing nothing, the John Irving "Hotel New Hampshire" madness forced on the proceedings and the most bland, ridiculous characters imaginable -- it's all absurd, silly, unbelievable.

Great novels are about truth. This novel is an empty farce. I see a young and promising author turned vainglorious. While acknowledging that Martin Amis has made this pose a career, I wish Gilbert would try for more.

A gem of a book. Billy Schine has volunteered to be a "normal" for two weeks at a drug research facility, mainly to escape from the loose and frayed ends of his young life. While there he listens to veterans speak about their past researches and the effects of drugs they've experienced both 3rd- and 1st-hand. These stories become part of the bragadaccio found in former high school athletic glories, sexual escapades, war stories, fishing tales and are so horrific they can't possibly be untrue.

This is just a part of what Gilbert weaves into his story, with brittle prose, slashing humor and fathoms-deep insight. Yes, it does call into question those awful blurby things of isolation, meaning of life, leaving some kind of stamp on the world. But Gilbert goes so far beyond the facile-qualities that are usually found. Each issue, of ethics, connection, family, is played out on so many tiers, with a master's prose and a sage's insight. It bogs down a bit at the end, but that does not detract from the overall pleasures to be gained from this book.

What caught me about the novel was its ability to keep me on edge. Not from a plot generated position or in terms of character, but the author kept me on edge as to whether or not he was going to fail. At first, in introducing the story, my fear was that the author did not know what tone he wanted to take. Humorous? Humanist/absurdist? And this seemingly indecisive approach had me cringing for the moment these separate sympathies would collapse into all out nonsense. However and surprisingly, that moment never came. As the novel progressed, I was pleased to see that the author never flagged from his initial tonal indecisiveness; ambiguity in style reflected the oddness of the characters and their story's particular brand of humanism. More, by shifting between humour and whatever it is similar to cynical seriousness, the reader finds that paying attention to the narrative has turned into a game of sorts. Is this a funny part? Or should I feel guilty for smiling? How inappropriate is it, really, to laugh at the mentally deranged, the promiscuous, the assisted suicide? The novel was not without problems, of course. Aside from the protagonist, personal, stylistic details are sperad too thinly over the remaining characters. We know as much about the bus driver as we do the nurse as we do the guard as we do the roomate as we... You get the point. I think the novel would have been best served by developing a strong counterpoint to the main character. While a person may argue that everything in the novel is a counter to the confused Billy Schine, in not taking form as a character, per se, the counterpoint lacks punch to the point of being missed entirely. This narrative unevenness does detract from the overall strength of the novel. All the single aspects of the novel, however, combine to form a rather dense and enjoyable read.

The Normals didn't grab me at all, and while I can admire author David Gilbert's literary dexterity, I just felt that in this novel there was a distinct lack of focus. It's as though Gilbert is trying to pack so much meaning and place so many themes into the novel, that most readers will probably be exhausted by story's end. In all fairness, however, the novel's embattled, beleaguered protagonist evokes much compassion, and readers will probably find themselves identifying with his plight.

Billy Schine is very much a hero for the 21st century. He's 28 years old, street-smart, college educated, works for a temp agency, but is somewhat of a young urban failure. His relationship with his girlfriend has not been going very well, and he has acquired masses of debt from student loan repayments. It doesn't help that he has next to no relationship with his parents, who are emotionally unavailable to him. They are both trapped in their own self absorbed little world - his Mother is just diagnosed with Alzheimer's and his father can't cope with losing her.

Billy is a fit of desperation decides to escape from the bill collectors by joining a pharmacological test group. He's just received a threatening letter from the collection agency, so he hopes that the money gleaned from this study will give him a fresh start and allow him to pay off his debts. Much of the action of the novel takes place at the headquarters of the company where Billy stays with the other members of the group and is subjected to two weeks of psychoactive drug testing (the experimental drug is designed for schizophrenics). The group's blood is taken everyday and they are closely monitored for side effects.

The drug starts to have strange side effects on Billy and his colleagues: from day one, one character nicknamed Do, never washes, avidly reading the Bible, while becoming obsessed with carrying out anti-social behaviour. Another character called Lannigan, shaves his entire body. There's also a scar-covered man who says he gets his kicks from a "professional traumatist."

The story is pretty much a pieced together a montage of Billy's reactions to the various people who will eventually become part of his group of titular "normals." As he develops a crush on Gretchen, the only female normal (and the only sympathetic character), Billy begins to evaluate his own sorry life. The irony is whether it is the effects of the drug that is causing him to be introspective and pensive, or whether it is just the ramifications of being shut up in such a controlled, restricted environment.

The narrative is peppered with Billy's pessimistic diatribe and is full of social commentary: He muses on the profiteering of corporate drug companies, the viciousness of the media, and constantly references the vacuous influence of pop-culture. Billy's final decision to agree to a second more radical study at the risk of death doesn't come a moment to soon. And his motivations for deciding to partake in this study are also surprisingly unconvincing. Readers will probably enjoy parts of this book, but this reader thought that it came across as almost short story-like - it's just a series of vignettes of Billy's obsessive, and neurotic rifts. Mike Leonard February 05.

He is one of my new favorite writers..love his style..so brilliant at articulating both his internal and external worlds in so entertaining and perceptive a fashion. His descriptions and metaphors demonstrate his uncanny awareness and ability to express what so many of us cannot. I don't even care about the subject matter; that's how much I enjoy reading his writing and can't wait for his next endeavour. I'm always so happy to discover the rare writer who is such a treat to read because he's unpredictable, witty, and relentlessly intelligent. It's disappointing to see how many don't appreciate this book in these reviews...perhaps it indicates a preference for the more commercial/typical novelists who are all so similar and lack Mr Gilbert's talent.

I picked up this book in my local book store because the cover caught my eye. What a lucky find. I loved this book. The main character Billy Shine is a cross between Holden Caufield and Mc Murphy. The book is both funny and sad in it's exploration of the conflicting emotions that tug on young Billy. A great read, highly reccommend it.

I picked up this book without knowing anything about the book or the author, so I had zero expectations.

The language was too creative at times, but the fundamental story line was so entertaining I just kept turning pages.

A great book for a summer vacation.