Current Young Adult Reads & Reviews: Classics

Guest, Judith. Ordinary People. NY, NY: Penguin, 2015. Print. ISBN: 978-0-14-006517-6

Summary: Ordinary people living ordinary lives enduring life's ordinary issues and tragedies but struggling along the way to learn to heal. A father who cares too much, a mother that doesn't care enough, and son just trying to figure out how to exist between the two.

Analysis: Ordinary People takes place during the 1970s in the Chicago area, Judith Guests starts the reader off right in the middle of a family crisis. A son has died in a tragic accident, another has recently attempted suicide as he is racked with the guilt of that tragic night. The main character Conrad is a junior in high school and seems to be at a total loss as to how he is going to survive each day. He starts off his days with minute tasks to get through the basic needs and demands of the day. He is living but not living. Guest does a great job painting the picture of despair for the reader, “The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together” (Guest 2). Conrad’s mother seems aloof and uncaring of her son’s needs while his father is trying but comes off too overbearing. Both parents are struggling with their own personal grief. “They are ordinary people, after all. For a time they had entered the world of the newspaper statistic; a world where any measure you took to feel better was temporary, at best, but that is over. This is permanent. It must be” (Guest 94).

            The story is told in different perspectives leading the reader in closer to that character at that moment in time giving the reader a more in depth look into that character’s thought processes. “It was like falling into a hole and it keeps getting bigger and bigger, you can’t get out. And then all of a sudden it’s inside you, it is you, and you’re trapped, and it’s all over.” (Guest 250). This is a story of ordinary people living ordinary lives and how life’s tribulations reverberate through each person involved differently as well as how differently each person deals with them. An overwhelming theme in the story is that life happens, no matter what it is, it’s just the way things are. “Over and over this same lesson to be learned; it is the way things are.” (Guest 258).

            Guest does an excellent job reeling us into this family and their issues. Written in 1976, this novel is classic because no matter what year it is the issues the characters are dealing with… loss, grief, depression, therapy, healing… will always be current issues. The reader feels connected to Conrad, hoping for him to find his way out of his struggles. This is a book for young adults and adults alike. Recommended more for the high school age group as it does deal with some darker more mature issues like teenage suicide and intercourse. Ordinary People is a great look into the different ways people are and can be affected by the same issues. No matter who you are, life’s trials will visit us all. This story has and will continue to stand against the test of time. “You’re all right kid. Ordinary.” (Guest 216).

Activity: After the completion of reading the novel, Ordinary People, students will create an infographic or a pamphlet using the digital tool Canva for folks dealing with the loss of someone close to them with ways to get help. Students must include signs of depression that Conrad, his father, and his mother exhibited from the novel. Students must also include three different ways to seek help.

Related Resources: Below are 2 related book titles that deal with similar themes to Ordinary People, losing a family member, the grief that brings, and how to come to terms with it.

Asher, Jay. 13 Reasons Why. London: Penguin, 2017. Print.
Thirteen Reasons Why is a modern story about a girl that commits suicide and the thirteen reasons she' says why and how the people who knew her struggle to understand and cope.

Wesselhoeft, Conrad. Adios, Nirvana. Boston: Graphia/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print.
Adios, Nirvana is a story about Jonathan, a sixteen year-old dealing with the loss of his twin brother as he helps an older man deal with own loses during the war.

Scholarly Review:

Kirkus Reviews, 07/01/1976

Guest, Judith. Ordinary People. Viking Press, 1976. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=kdh&AN=BK0000283149&site=ehost-live&scope=site.