Plain and Normal: A Novel - Softcover

Wilcox, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316941352 ISBN 13: 9780316941358

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 1999

Synopsis

Lloyd Norris is slouching towards middle age. Recently out of the closet, he knows it's time to devote himself to finding the love & companionship that have long eluded him. But his search is complicated & the result is a dizzyingly funny book about the awesome power of our need for connection.

About this title

Review:

The paunchy, earnest 43-year-old Severinus Lloyd Norris strives for a life of stasis amidst an emergent midlife crisis brought on less by age than by the people in his life. Pearl May, his beautiful wife of over 20 years, has just divorced him and has been encouraging Lloyd to come out of the closet and, eventually, out of their shared home in Yonkers. His attempts at being a volunteer companion to the elderly for Manhattan Cares are foiled when his clients reject him for being too boring. His boss, Ms. Vigoris, can't get him to gracefully accept a promotion at the label and logo company, one that should have come years before. Even the man Lloyd desires can't make a successful pass at him.

Lloyd fights with all his heart to live a plain and normal life, yet with his supporting cast of characters, he doesn't stand a chance. There's an ex-lesbian Christian widowed meter reader turned synchronized swimming coach; an overbearing, incompetent secretary with distant ties to Dutch royalty--whose eccentric fiancé happens to be in love with Lloyd; a power-hungry former boss who guilts his way into Lloyd's personal life in an effort to sleep with Pearl May; not to mention the Jesuit priest eager to fix Lloyd up with his cousin. Although Plain and Normal, Wilcox's seventh novel, may not dissuade longtime fans from their preference for earlier works like Modern Baptists, this satiric romp on the pains of growing older may attract new readers to one of the late 20th century's smartest comic novelists. --Kera Bolonik

About the Author:

"James Wilcox is also the author of the novels Modern Baptists, North Gladiola, Miss Undine's Living Room, Polite Sex, North Gladiola, Guest of a Sinner, and, most recently, Plain and Normal. He is a graduate of Yale University and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is currently Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Mississippi State University."

About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0316941352
• ISBN 13: 9780316941358
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288