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. Also helping is a relationship with a new girlfriend, Jeannine Pratt.Ĭalvin sees 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. Initially resistant, he slowly starts to respond to Dr. His father Calvin, a successful tax attorney, gently leans on him to make appointments to see a local psychiatrist, Dr. 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 parents committed him to a psychiatric hospital from which he has only recently returned after eight months of treatment.
Six months later, a severely depressed Conrad attempted suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor in the bathroom.
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. The novel begins as life is seemingly returning to normal for the Jarretts of Lake Forest, Illinois, in September 1975. For a time they had entered the world of the newspaper statistic a world where any measure you took to feel better was temporary, at best, but that is over. The novel received the 1976 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and is also assigned in many American secondary school English classes. 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.Īlthough 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. Ordinary People is Judith Guest's first novel.
0 kommentar(er)
