I was enchanted by the book title and the nice 'happy family' picture on the book cover. Plus the fact that they are stories,12 of them.

12 Stories about everyday...touched on issues close to our hearts like life,death,wedding and Thanksgiving etc.. Each one of them tell a story or situation of the characters ,each have their own moral behind.

The whole idea was like a breath of fresh air and Lucia Nevai's writing style creditable and the stories were less than normal. Extraordinary descriptions of how people feel,react and uphold the 'normal' image and attitude of dysfunctional lives.

I think Nevai choose a perfect title for her book because it refelcted the ironies and illustrate through her stories how being normal are not at all an easy task.

Normal is a very American book, its subject the American family. The book is about families and their problems, families normal and not so normal. In some way every story in the book has to do with an ideal of normalcy, success, happiness, against which Nevai measures the lives of her characters. And how do these American fictional characters measure up?

On a first reading, the gap between 'normal' and the often dysfunctional lives of Nevai's characters springs to the fore, due in part to Nevai's edgy humor, aphoristic writing and ability to evoke startling vignettes within vignettes (she can create a whole scene within a sentence, yet keep that scene within her peripheral vision as she deftly steers the story front and center). But this is a book with staying power, and what I discovered with further reading is that many of her characters are 'normal'. That is, in an unexpected sense, they do measure up to whatever ideal that is out there haunting their actions.

True, Nevai's families are all-American in their rushed, stressed-out, hyped-up, competitive modernity, and her characters can find family life tentative, disappointing and rootless. Yet one of the things these characters seek, and sometimes get from their families is, well, character. And it is character of a particularly American sort. In "The Talking Woman" - which has to be the best mid-life crisis short story ever written - Vic dreams of the men of his father's generation "who had more character in their little fingers than a whole corporate division had today." In "Thanksgiving with Dorrie and Heck", Willa's character is disclosed in a burst of improvisation, when she decides "to reveal her breaking heart instead of passing her torture off as fun even as the rack is turning."

Nevai's social commentary is astute and her characterizations are unsentimental. At the same time, her characters are full of heart and fumbling hopefulness.

The stories are brilliantly written, entertaining, visual, with a wry humor.You can read the stories for diversion. You can read them for fun.You can read them for insight about contemporary American culture. And you can read them again and be surprised, be moved and informed by Nevai's take on the human plight.

Nevai is alert to her characters' difficulties and eccentricities, to the wounds inflicted on them, and to the healing life offers, sometimes gratuitously.

What a refreshing look at the thoughts and actions of "normal" people in everyday situations. This is NOT "Leave it to Beaver" or Martha Stewerts Manual for Living. It is instead a real look at life and how we, as the ultimate individual, non-logical, and slightly dysfunctional human handle our emotions and challenges. A breath of Fresh air in a library filled with blown smoke.