The Normals: A Novel
by David Gilbert
Category: Fiction

Download the reading guide for this book here In this critically acclaimed comic masterpiece, David Gilbert tells the story of Billy Schine, a young man who innocently enrolls in a 14-day human drug testing study and finds his normal world turned upside-down. Like a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for the postmodern age, The Normals is a tour de force from a writer of astonishing intelligence and imagination. "Much of [The Normals] antic humor derives from Gilbert's unerring grasp of America's varied forms of self-medication. But what makes this first novel memorable is its exploration of the contradictory desire both to escape the world and to be plunged back into it."-New Yorker "Wild and woolly...a trenchant study of human suggestibility, tricked out with a wry subplot about the media hoopla surrounding a brain-tumor victim whose latest MRI bears a striking resemblance to the Shroud of Turin."-Seattle Times "T.C. Boyle meets Alice Sebold with a bit of Paul Theroux...Gilbert uses sharp humor to tackle serious issues such as the search for self, love, and medical ethos. This is a novel that resonates long after you turn the last page."-Rocky Mountain News "[A] must buy...[an] intelligent and funny dissection of our ADD-addled culture."-Maxim (four stars) "A writer of loopy elegance...[Gilbert] is able to refract our world back to us in ways that words on the page can best convey."-Boston Globe Also available: HC 1-58234-456-6 ISBN 13: 978-158234-456- $24.95