Normal

Amy Bloom

532 ratings by Goodreads

Language: English

Published by Random House USA Inc, 2002

067945652X / 9780679456520

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Seller: World of Books Inc, Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.World of Books Inc

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Hardcover

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Amy Bloom has won a devoted readership and wide critical acclaim for fiction of rare humor, insight, grace, and eloquence, and the same qualities distinguish Normal, her first full-length work of nonfiction. In Normal, the National Book Critics Circle Award and National Book Award finalist explores sex and gender through portraits of people who are widely considered not normal. “A great many people, sick of news from the margins, worn out by the sand shifting beneath their assumptions, like to imagine Nature as a sweet, simple voice: tulips in spring, Vermont’s leaves falling in autumn,” Bloom writes. “Nature is more like Aretha Franklin: vast, magnificent, capricious, occasionally hilarious, and infinitely varied.” Bloom takes us on a provocative, intimate journey into the lives of “people who reveal, or announce, that their gender is variegated rather than monochromatic”—female-to-male transsexuals, heterosexual crossdressers, and the intersexed. We meet Lyle Monelle and his mother, Jessie, who recognized early on that her little girl was in fact a boy and used her life savings to help Lyle make the transgender transition. On a Carnival cruise with a group of crossdressers and their spouses, we meet Peggy Rudd and her husband, “Melanie,” who devote themselves to the cause of “ordinary heterosexual men with an additional feminine dimension.” And we meet Hale Hawbecker, “a regular, middle-of-the-road, white-bread guy” with a wife, kids, and a medical condition, the standard treatment for which would have changed his life and his gender. Bloom shows the essential humanity in this infinite variety, allowing us to appreciate these people as they really are—both like and unlike everyone else—and inviting us “to see into these particular worlds and back out to the larger one we all share.” Casting light into the dusty corners of our assumptions about sex, gender, and identity, about what it means to be male or female, Bloom reveals new facets to ideas about happiness, personality, and character, even as she brilliantly illumines the very concept of “normal.&rdquo.…

Seller Inventory # CIN067945652XVG

Title
Normal
Author
Amy Bloom
Publisher
Random House USA Inc
Publication year
2002
Condition
Very Good
Binding
Hardback
Language
English
ISBN 10
067945652X
ISBN 13
9780679456520

World of Books Inc

Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.

4-star seller

AbeBooks seller since March 23, 2026

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Founded in 2002, World of Books is a leading online destination for buying and selling both preloved and new books, committed to making sustainable reading accessible to all. With a mission to help people read more and waste less, World of Books offers a huge range of affordable, high-quality books — giving both new and preloved titles a second life. The company also operates World of Books – Sell Your Books, an easy-to-use platform that allows customers to trade in unwanted books for cash, helping to keep books in circulation while promoting sustainability. As a Certified B Corp, World of Books is driven by a vision to become the world’s largest and most sustainable dedicated online bookstore. The company measures its success through the positive environmental impact it creates, the value it provides to customers, and its ability to operate profitably while supporting its sustainable mission …

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