Autorentext

Karen 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.

Klappentext

A Los Angeles Times bestseller and one of the Washington Post's best books of the year, LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE charts the lives of "three richly textured characters whose irreducible idiosyncrasies, griefs, longings, and loves will surely expand our sense of what it means to be like normal people" (Chicago Tribune). The story of this family revolves around an off-kilter center: Lena, who is forty-eight years old but mentally locked in childhood. Following Lena's escape from her residential home with her troubled twelve-year-old niece and her widowed mother's search for them, Karen Bender moves deftly between past and present, through three entire lifetimes in a single day, as each character searches for love and acceptance in a world where normalcy is elusive. "Poignantly and brilliantly portrayed" (TimeOut New York), LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE is a hilarious, heartbreaking, unforgettable family drama that resonates long after the last page is turned.

Leseprobe
One It was seven-thirty in the morning when Ella Rose, clad in her pink satin bathrobe, walked across her Culver City apartment, turned on the pert voices of KNX Newsradio, and sat down at her kitchen table, ready to write her morning list.
Ella's wooden table was dwarfed by her bulky kitchen appliances. Her table was now always set, elegantly, for one: a single lace napkin, a straw placemat, her favorite crystal glass. Ella put her pad and pencil on the placemat; she began her list with the date.
On her refrigerator, her daily calendar was turned to the page: September 23, 1978. lena anniversary was written very neatly in red ink.
Ella did not remember when she'd last changed the day on her calendar; she wasn't sure that today was, in fact, September 23. She reached over to her black phone on the kitchen counter. Picking up the receiver, she looked into it and then hung up. She lifted her thick Los Angeles Yellow Pages beside the phone; the book fell open as though exhausted. Placing her finger on an ad, Ella took a deep breath and carefully dialed the number. "Santa Glen Hardware," a girlish voice said, and yawned.
Ella sat very still. In a quiet, polite voice, she asked, "What day is it?" Silence. "Santa Glen Hardware," the girl announced, a bit more forcefully.
"September twenty-third?" asked Ella, her voice sharpening. "Miss? Is it September twenty-third?" "Who - Brett, what day is it!" the girl yelled. "Some - what! Twenty-what? Okay. Twenty-third. Hello? It's the twenty-third. Can I help -" "Thank you," Ella said, and hung up.
Ella wrote september 23, 1978 across the top of the page. She could hear the sounds of morning lifting off Pico Boulevard: produce trucks roaring like huge bison and birds cawing, sad, repetitive, from the trees.
On the pad, Ella wrote: 1. wish lena happy anniversary. Or perhaps, since Lena's husband was dead, this was not a good idea; she erased it and started again. 1. see if lena remembers anniversary.

2. tell mrs. lowenstein - What. Mrs. Lowenstein, the director of Panorama Village for the past two years, had called several times this week, each time describing Lena's latest misdemeanors with perhaps unnecessary detail. For twelve years, Lena and Bob had occupied Room 129. Ella had moved them into the residence when Lena was thirty-six and Bob forty-four. She had watched the two of them wander in, the babies of the place, her daughter's red hair shining like a poppy among the silver hairdos. Lena and Bob had always been on good behavior; Ella believed they had many friends.
   Ella remembered why Lena was supposed to stop smoking and wrote this down: smoking is now limited to certain rooms at panorama village.
   Why did they have to limit it, anyway? What small joys did Lena have?
3. buy lena gum.
   No - her teeth were almost gone. 3. buy lena hard candy.
4. buy l new slippers. size small.
5. buy l chap stick.
6. check l toenails. cut.
7. check bathmat in lena's tub.
8. check for glass in rug.
9. check for food spilled in room.
10. check lena has soap. dove.
11. check for ants.
12. check for rug stains. cover them.
13. check lock on door.
14. check that windows close and open.
15. check for She tried to think of other points of danger in her daughter's room. With no further ideas, Ella amended number 15 to 15. check room.
16. von's.
    Number 16 was a reminder for herself. Her hand was trembling slightly, and she put her pencil down.
    She stood up, opened the refrigerator, and peered inside. Ella had lived alone here for three years, since Lou's death, and she was still not accustomed to a refrigerator that held only items that she liked to eat. At the moment, her refrigerator held two cans of V- 8, half a roast chicken, a carton of Mocha Mix, a pint of low-fat cottage cheese, most of a box of See's candy - some of the pieces with one bite taken out of them - an ancient container of Parkay, a large bag of Oreos, and a plastic container of matzo ball soup. She kept a package of beef jerky, one of Lou's favorite foods, in the butter compartment. It comforted her to leave the jerky there, and she harbored a secret hope that she might open the compartment to find that the package had disappeared. She had vowed not to eat it herself, but last night she had missed Lou terribly and had tried a few of the dry, salty strips while she watched television. When she went to bed, her mouth tasted like his.
    Ella picked up her pad and wrote on a second page: 17. jerky.
17. bananas.
18. baloney.
19. bread.
    What should number 21 be on her list? She closed her eyes, trying to remember, but her mind was dark. The content of number 211 was just another bit of information she had lost. And two weeks ago she had found in her closet a scallop-sleeved, eggplant-purple polyester dress that she was certain she had neverrrrr seen before. The dress hung, limp and arrogant; it seemed to have blown in, of its own volition, to join her other dresses in the middle of the night. Ella tried very hard to remember when she had purchased it. She took the dress from the closet and placed it on her bed, wondering where it had come from and wishing it would go away.

20. talk to vivien about lena.
    Her younger daughter's name had floated on and off Ella's lists for the last year or so. She often wrote it with the best of intentions but then crossed it out.
    This was what Mrs. Lowenstein had told her in their conversations over the last six months: Lena had left her room at midnight and tried to get on an RTD bus. Lena had been caught in the 7-Eleven down the street, her pockets heavy with stolen cigarettes. Lena had demanded to use the office phone and had dialed a strange number; she had ended up calling Singapore.
    The phone rang. Ella set down her pencil and picked up the phone on the fourth ring. "Hello?" she asked. She was very still. "Yes, this is Lena's mother."

    Ella's brown Buick floated in front of Vivien's house. The broad ranch-style homes were similar, built on a tract; her daughter's lawn was the only one aglow with red roses, and to Ella it looked as though the flowers were being readied for some exciting even…