Ordinary People: 50th-Anniversary Edition
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Ordinary People: 50th-Anniversary Edition

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  • AuthorJudith Guest
  • PublisherPenguin Classics
  • Pages256
  • ISBN9780143139461

About this book

One of the foremost literary bestsellers of our time, now in a 50th-anniversary edition featuring a new foreword by psychoanalyst and New York Times bestselling novelist and memoirist Amy Bloom

A Penguin Classic

They were a perfect family. Calvin was a successful provider and Beth a fastidious wife. They had two sons, Buck and Conrad, but now they have one.

When originally published, Ordinary People introduced an original American voice. It sold more than a million copies and inspired the 1980 Academy Award–winning movie directed by Robert Redford and starring Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Judd Hirsch, and Timothy Hutton. Fifty years later, it remains an iconic novel, distinguished by Judith Guest’s ear for dialogue and her unflinching portrait of one family’s reckoning with grief.

Author: Judith Guest
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published: 2026-11-03
Pages: 256
ISBN: 9780143139461

Praise for this book

Stirring, powerful . . . It mines marriage, family, and sexes with meaning, rejecting sarcasm, bite, and snark. . . . This is good writing.
Classic Chicago Magazine
Guest has the ability to move a toughened reviewer to tears.
Newsweek
Admirable . . . touching . . . full of the anxiety, despair, and joy that are common to every human experience of suffering and growth.
The New York Times
Rejoice! A novel for all ages and all seasons.
The Washington Post Book World

Quoted in excerpt, with attribution. Follow a source link for the full review.