Ordinary People | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Ordinary People Critical Overview

Critical response to Ordinary People has been mixed. Reviewers have found much to praise and much to criticize in Guest's novel Many have found her characterization of Conrad Jarrett, the alienated teenager Just released from a mental hospital, the most impressive aspect of the novel. Lore Dickstein writes in the New York Times Book Review that "Guest portrays Conrad not only as if she has lived with him on a daily basis-which I sense may be true-but as if she has gotten into his head. The dialogue Conrad has with himself, his psychiatrist, his friends, his family, all rings true with adolescent anxiety. This is the small hard kernel of brilliance in the novel." Guest has acknowledged her fascination with adolescence; in an interview with former Detroit Free Press book editor Barbara Holliday, Guest says of adolescence, "It's a period of time... where people are very vulnerable and of ten...
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