Normal People Don't Live Like This

A JOLTING, SENSUAL, AND DEEPLY COMPASSIONATE NOVEL IN STORIES FROM ONE OF THE MASTERS OF THE FORM

1970s Greenwich Village: Leah Levinson can't help worshipping the girls who torment her at school. Her perilous, magnetic friendships with Rainey Royal and Angeline Yost-girls she fears yet cannot resist-leave her desperate to shift the balance of power and affection. Meanwhile, Leah's emotionally estranged mother, Helen, secretly rents a room uptown where she lives out a second life. And Rainey-whose chaotic upbringing fills her with artistic inspiration and dread-decides to risk everything on an act of vengeance in a legendary artists' building. As we move between points of view, the New York of another era blazes with danger, beauty, and possibility.

First published in 2009 and now expanded with a new story, Normal People Don't Live Like This is a luminous depiction of the crises, cruelties, and passions of girls and mothers, and the first book in the Rainey Royal Cycle. Each book stands on its own, yet together they echo and amplify one another, creating one of the richest and most intense worlds in contemporary American fiction.

"You think, while tearing through the pages: This woman knows all my secrets. The intrigue of Landis's stories lies in small gestures and the exploration of characters' psyches with a thorough, delicate eye."-The Rumpus