Already excerpted in Granta and the New Yorker, this prizewinning young author's tremendously poignant first novel is one of the outstanding debuts of the year.A tour de force of literary craft and emotional resonance, Like Normal People charts a family constellation that revolves around an off-kilter centre: Lena, who is forty-five but mentally locked in childhood. Moving deftly between past and present, the novel follows Lena's day-long escape from her residential home with her troubled eleven-year-old niece. While this odd couple takes refuge on a southern California beach, Lena's mother, Ella, goes in search of them and in the process relives her own life's dreams and disappointments. For so long, Lena has been the focus of Ella's world. Now Lena has at last found approximate normality, by marrying a man much like herself, and Ella must find a way to let her daughter go.Karen Bender brilliantly enters into the consciousness of three women at different stages of life, each on a private search for love and acceptance. Like Normal People is a tender, often hilarious and thoroughly unforgettable family drama.