Ordinary People (Guest novel)

Ordinary People is Judith Guest's first novel. Published in 1976, it tells the story of a year in the life of the Jarretts, an affluent suburban family trying to cope with the aftermath of two traumatic events.
Although it won critical praise and awards upon its release, it is best remembered today as the basis for the 1980 film version, which won four Academy Awards including Best Picture. The novel received the 1976 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and is also assigned in many American secondary school English classes.
Plot summary.
The novel begins as life is seemingly returning to normal for the Jarretts of Lake Forest, Illinois, in September 1975. It is slightly more than a year since their elder son Buck was killed when a sudden storm came up while he and their other son Conrad were sailing on Lake Michigan. Six months later, a severely depressed Conrad attempted suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor in the bathroom. His parents committed him to a psychiatric hospital from which he has only recently returned after four months of treatment. He is attending school and trying to resume his life, but knows he still has unresolved issues, particularly with his mother, Beth, who has never really recovered from Buck's death and keeps an almost maniacally perfect household and family.
His father Calvin, a successful tax attorney, gently leans on him to make appointments to see a local psychiatrist, Dr. Tyrone Berger. Initially resistant, he slowly starts to respond to Dr. Berger and comes to terms with the root cause of his depression, his identity crisis and survivor's guilt over having survived when Buck did not. Also helping is a relationship with a new girlfriend, Jeannine Pratt.
Calvin sees Dr. Berger as the events of the recent past have caused him to begin to doubt many things he once took for granted, leading to a midlife crisis. This leads to strain in his marriage as he finds Beth increasingly cold and distant, while she in turn believes he is overly concerned about Conrad to the point of being manipulated. Finally the friction becomes enough that Beth decides to leave him at the novel's conclusion. Father and son, however, have closed the gap between them.
Characters.
Three other characters do not appear in the story directly but have a strong effect on it nonetheless, recalled extensively by Conrad and Calvin:
Major themes.
Loss and the different ways people deal with it are a major theme of "Ordinary People". Conrad loses not only his brother but a good portion of his then-self when Buck dies. His father finds himself re-examining his life and seeing it more the result of random chance and accident than any ability on his part. Beth tries to control it like everything else in her life. She and Conrad were, Calvin notes, the only people not to cry at Buck's funeral.
Technique.
Guest's chapters alternate between Conrad and Calvin, in third person limited omniscient narration entirely in the present tense. Readers are privy to their thoughts but not those of the other characters in the scene, not even Cal or Conrad if they happen to intrude. The narrative frequently goes into patches of italicized interior monologue and stream of consciousness.
The novel also circles around both the accident that killed Buck and Conrad's suicide attempt. In the initial chapters they are both only referenced or discussed in the most general terms; later on we learn more details and finally get brief flashbacks from Conrad.
History.
Origin.
Guest began "Ordinary People" as a short story, but found herself writing more and more as she explored the characters in greater depth, wanting to know more about their backgrounds. "Before I knew it," she says "I was 200 pages in". It took her three years to write, after she gave up her teaching job and decided to concentrate on actually finishing a novel.
It became focused on the psychology of the characters, particularly Conrad.
I wanted to explore the anatomy of depression — how it works and why it happens to people; how you can go from being down but able to handle it, to being so down that you don’t even want to handle it, and then taking a radical step with your life — trying to commit suicide — and failing at that, coming back to the world and having to "act normal" when, in fact, you have been "forever changed".
Publication.
Guest did not have an agent initially. The first publisher she sent it to rejected it. The second sent a rejection letter that read in part: "While the book has some satiric bite, overall the level of writing does not sustain interest and we will have to decline it." An editor at Viking Press bought the manuscript, but the company waited eight months before putting it out, the first time in 26 years it had published an unsolicited manuscript.
It would go on to win the Janet Heidiger Kafka Prize for best first novel. Ninety thousand copies were sold in hardback; Robert Redford, who would eventually direct the film, acquired the rights before publication (actually traveling to Guest's suburban Minnesota home to do so). Since 1976, half a million copies of the paperback have been sold.
Legacy.
In the wake of the film version, the novel has been assigned in many American high school (and sometimes middle school) English classes due to its young-adult protagonist. This has led to some challenges to its inclusion on reading lists and curricula due to not only the subject matter but a short scene near the end of the novel in which Conrad and Jeannine make love. The American Library Association ranked it 59th on its list of the hundred most frequently challenged books in school libraries during the 1990s.
Film, TV, and theatrical adaptations.
Robert Redford bought the rights to Guest's manuscript before it was published, intending not to act in it but make his directorial debut with the film. "Ordinary People" was released in 1980, winning that year's Academy Award for Best Picture. Redford and Timothy Hutton also received Oscars for directing and acting, respectively.
The novel has also been adapted into a play.