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Title: Ordinary People
Author: Judith Guest
Publication Info: Penguin Group January 30, 1993
ISBN: 0140997180
Genre: Top 100 Banned Books
Submitted by Stephanie Gayle
The book is about the Jarret family (mother: Beth, father: Cal, son: Conrad) and their struggle to survive the aftermath of Conrad’s recent suicide attempt. We learn surprisingly late in the book that there was another brother, Buck, who died in a boating accident. Conrad was also in the accident and has survivor’s guilt. It’s interesting how little space is devoted to the accident or the dead brother. We get it all as flashback and aftereffects. I thought the author relied too much on the reader too supply the back story. But had she shoved it down my throat, I’d also complain. Picky, picky!
The mother and father enjoy a social prominence and easy lifestyle that would be easy to make two-dimensional, but the author, by and large, avoids this. Cal is obsessed with his wife and she comes across a bit as a showpiece until we see her in action. Man, has this lady got issues. She discourages any talk of her son’s suicide attempt and resents the attention her husband lavishes on him. The husband drinks quite a bit and is constantly checking on Conrad, anxious to keep his son intact. The affection balance in the house is seriously off kilter. Conrad spends a lot of time thinking: about his time in the hospital, about his friends, about pressure from his swim coach. His thoughts seemed to me quite real. Throughout the book he begins healing with the help of his psychiatrist Dr. Berger (who is a master shrink in the manner of Good Will Hunting’s head doctor).
Why banned? Because it deals with the topic of teenage suicide. WTF? Oh, these folks must subscribe to the “if kids can’t read about a subject than they can’t imagine it or reenact it†school of thought. If that were true I’d gladly give up reading accounts of atrocities like genocide, rape, and worldwide food shortages. But that isn’t how it works and if I remember anything about my teenage years (besides the tragic spiral perm) it’s that teenagers think and talk about suicide, rather a lot. Giving them a book that portrays the subject with some sensitivity and insight isn’t the world’s worst idea. (Again, that would be my spiral perm).
In high school this was assigned reading for us, until some parent took a good look at it. We had the book for maybe a week, and then they made us give it back. I was about half way through….and pissed off! It was easy enough to go to the public library and check it out so that I could finish it. Luckily, my mother never believed in limiting what I read. And I still turned out to be a well adjusted adult!
(Side note: Every time I see Timothy Hutton, I want to hug him, just because of the film adaptation of this book.)
“the mother is a monster”
My mother-in-law (at that time) HATED the mother in the film version. Absolutely loathed her.
Yet—the family would descibe M-I-L as being like that mother, just minue the suicide / boating accident in the mix.
She was not comfortable that I was a writer. “Don’t put me in any of your books!” she’d say, but only half of that was a joke.
I didn’t have to, Judith Guest beat me to it.
:snerk:
Sign me,
Freaking GLAD I’m out of THAT family!
People have tried to ban Lucky, Alice Sebold’s memoir of her own rape and her recovery from it, from high school libraries. Lucky‘s first chapter does contain a brutal and graphic description of Sebold’s rape—honestly, I still wish I hadn’t read it (on a website put up by the “concerned parents” interested in banning it, no less!), but that’s only b/c I’m all triggery about rape. (They’ve also tried to ban The Lovely Bones, of course, though if you’ve read that, you know that the rape can scarcely be described as graphic.)
Apparently, according to these parents, rape isn’t something teenagers should be exposed to.
You know what? I agree. In the sense that rape should not exist. It should not be a horrifying reality in our world. But guess what, asshats? It is, and coddling your children is not going to help them if/when they themselves are (God forbid) raped. Hiding those books is only going to drive their feelings deeper and deeper inward and create deeper wounds that may never heal.
Now. Replace my discussion of rape with suicidal thoughts/tendencies, mental illness, or homosexuality (though I’d remove the “God forbid” from the latter), and there. My rage against censorship.
(BTW, I don’t think Lucky needs to be in an *elementary* school library, though I would make a case for the Lovely Bones.)
I keep this book on my classroom library shelf and it stays checked out all year. It’s not in our school library, but I don’t know why. I do know To Kill a Mockingbird was challenged last year and is no longer assigned as required reading without an alternative available for those who find it offensive. CRAZY what they’ll call books into question for!
I don’t know when or where or even why, but I’ve read this book(even though neither title nor name of author seemed even recognizable to me). Weird.
I have not read the book, but the title makes me shudder. The song “Ordinary People” played once a night, at least when I was working at a grocery store, and it was so annoying and insipid that I found myself contemplating suicide (after I tracked down whoever was doing the radio programming for our muzak channel.) Perhaps we can keep the novel around and ban the song?
I disagree with banning books but I know that it does happen so for most of the titles here, I figured “Yeah, lesbian love, yeah, anti-religion, not unexpected.” But ORDINARY PEOPLE? TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD? How are people getting away with this?