Book Reviews
(Pre-internet works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Eight months before the opening of this novel, Conrad Jarrett has attempted suicide.... What Ms. Guest's novel focuses on is Conrad's attempts to knit himself back into the fabric of suburban middle-American life.... It is with admirable skill that the author has made us experience Con's emergence from isolation.... But what is most touching about Ordinary People is the subtle degrees by which Conrad recovers his emotional elquibrium....What we experience in the process is not so much the relief of sudden revelation as the anxiety, despair, and joy of healing that is common to every human experience of suffering and growth.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - New York Times
It is difficult to realize that this is a first novel, because it is written with the simplicity of total authority.... I am particularly grateful to Ms. Guest for emphasizing the human need for open grieving…(She) is one of the few writers who has dared depict this aspect of affluent suburbia.
Madeleine L’Engle (author, A Wrinkle in Time)