Description
A wild, experimental, polyphonic novel, recounting a typical day of diminishing returns at a nursing home
House Mother Normal, subtitled “A Geriatric Comedy,” is the English writer B. S. Johnson’s fifth novel. Unusual in both its subject and structure, this novel is a remarkable study of old age, stripped of sentimentality and spiked with bizarre language and perceptions. Made up of eight monologues describing a single day at a nursing home, House Mother Normal explores the failing minds of the elderly with precision, humor, and unflagging compassion, and Johnson achieves, with inventiveness and escalating absurdity, a vivid multidimensional effect.
Reviews
"A most gifted writer." — Samuel Beckett
"The future of the novel depends on people like B. S. Johnson." — Anthony Burgess
"Like his admirer Samuel Beckett, Johnson locates his voices among conditions of such deprivation that even the most miserable memories are gilded by comparison: this paradox fuels equal parts of comedy and pathos. Never sentimental, at once corrosive and elegiac, House Mother Normal is a remarkable achievement." — The New York Times Book Review
"Britain’s one-man literary avant-garde." — Jonathan Coe
Also By: B.S. Johnson 
Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry
Paperback, 1986
