Normal People Don't Live Like This

by Dylan Landis

Book Overview

At the center of this startling fiction debut is Leah Levinson, a teen at sea in the anonymous ordeals of a middle-class upbringing on the Upper West Side in the 1970s. In ten installments, written from varying perspectives, we witness her uneasy relationships with faster, looser peers--girls she is drawn to but also alienated by.

No one, though, alienates Leah more than her mother, Helen. Estranged yet intertwined, they struggle within the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0892553545
• ISBN13: 9780892553549
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Persea Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Absolutely loved this book! I read it through in one sitting!

I absolutely loved this book. After a bit of a shaky start, I was drawn into this book and the lives of its incredibly well developed characters. If, like me, you have a moment of difficulty "getting into" the first chapter/story, persevere! You will not be disappointed. The main character in the book is so well crafted, that she truly seems to spring to life from the pages of the book. By the end of the book, I felt that I knew the character so well that it was actually sad to see the book end and the character "disappear" - - I wanted more. I read this book in one sitting - - something I very rarely do. It was that great!!!

Poignant, Striking, and Significant

While flipping the pages of this book eagerly, I couldn't seem to put it down, and finished it on the same day I started it. Landis creates compelling characters in her ten short stories that drive the reader eat up the book. With great depth of character, the author takes you on a journey with her fabulously crafted characters. With intensive attention to detail and fabulous imagery, this is a short story collection that draws in the reader and doesn't let go until the very last page.

Fan Mail

This book is electrifying! It reads like lightning and I couldn't put it down. The first chapter was traumatic - it hooked me and I had to find out more about the characters. I'm no book critic, not even an English major, but in my insignificant opinion, I think the author Ms. Landis is an incredible wordsmith. She conveys so much detail and ambience with an economy of words. I found the characters really rang true and I also found myself caring very deeply about them. An added delight - the author has also so skillfully conjured up the places her characters inhabit that my mind revisits them as if I've actually been there. I hope she continues to write with such passion and I look forward to the next one from her pen.

Couldn't put it down

I have a lot of half-read short story collections on my shelf. Really good stuff. I "appreciate" them, but I'm rarely driven to finish them. I love novels, worlds I can live inside for awhile. This book of stories is more like a novel. When one story ends, you're compelled on to the next. You do not want to put the book down at all. If you can handle the intensity. I read it in two sittings (would have been one if I wasn't in the middle of painting my porch). When I say intensity, I mean these stories do not look away. The main character, Leah, is a young girl who's frightened and fascinated by the whole feast of life--friendship, sex, death and the power of beauty. And Leah cannot keep her hand out of the flame. She is always heading straight into the heart of her fear until a surprisingly steely strength begins to emerge. Her eye is hyperobservant--it gets all the details of surface right (oh, does she know how battered high school jeans are supposed to fit and how chic Manhattan apartments are supposed to look)--but she also makes us feel the biologic reality that surface covers and the undertow of death the whole show is floating on. Several stories are also about other characters in Leah's world--a sexually precocious friend, Leah's mother--and these are just as wonderful. So, there's all that... and then there's the writing itself. Let's just say it's kind of dazzling. ...

As Good as Catcher in the Rye

What a fascinating, engaging, wonderful book! I should begin by saying truthfully that I could hardly put it down. I believe the author has created another Catcher in the Rye. Leah Levinson's teenage anxiety, budding sexuality, and the bildungsroman Landis has written gives us insight into teenage girls just as Holden Caulfield provided into teenage boys in an earlier era. In addition to the insights and compelling stories, I love the prose. There are a million little gems in this short book. Dotting them as I read along, I almost wore out my pencil. "The butts in her ashtray were all kissed red at one end and bent jagged at the other." Or "His tone was gentle, a flag in a light breeze." There are just so many sparkling nuggets, I can't list them all. I enjoyed the book immensely and gained much insight from it, and I guess a reader could not ask more than that.