USED: Ordinary People

By Judith Guest

Published by Penguin Random House, 1982

263 pages, paperback

From the publisher:

When it was first published, Ordinary People sold more than a million copies and inspired an Oscar-winning movie adaptation by Robert Redford, starring Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore. It tells the story of the Jarretts, a typical American family. Calvin is a determined, successful provider and Beth an organized, efficient wife. They had two sons, Conrad and Buck, but now they have only one. In the aftermath of their loss, the Jarretts find that what lies beneath the veneer of a perfectly ordinary family are people broken by tragedy, grown distant and unfamiliar to one another. Fifty years later, Ordinary People remains an extraordinary novel about a family divided by pain yet bound by their determination to heal.