We're All Damaged

We're All Damaged by Matthew Norman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Andy Carter’s wife leaves him for a paramedic who lives down the street. Heartbroken, he loses his job, proceeds to ruin his best friend’s wedding, and decides to leave his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska for the chaotic anonymity of New York City where he works as a server and lives with a cat named Jeter. When Andy’s grandfather gets sick, he is forced to come back to Omaha and deal with all the crap he left behind, plus a few new wrinkles: his mother, now a budding right wing radio talk show host; and a mysterious woman named Daisy who seems determined to remake his life.

It’s great fun, along the lines of Jonathan Tropper or Tom Perrotta. The observations made are pretty winning, and I laughed a lot at the situations, all the while envisioning the story as a potential movie someday.

I enjoyed this book pretty much from beginning to end, though I am going to have to point out the two problems I had with it, because, well, I liked this enough to think about it a little more deeply than some other books I’ve read recently.

Number one: I did NOT like the way he casually referred to his mother as “Nancy.” I get that maybe he was trying to position her as a right wing mouthpiece persona and that was simply how he was going to shorthand reference her, but to me, it just came across as a little churlish and juvenile (then again, maybe that was the point). Number two: maybe not a personal issue for me, but the whole representation of the Glitter Mafia characters who harass his mother come off as cartoonish. I’m curious if Matthew Norman has taken any heat for this yet. The characters do serve a purpose in moving the story along, and playing counter to Andy’s mother, but they are at least somewhat troublesome.

Ok. That said…

Great book. I’m down for the follow up (and hey, this guy’s from Baltimore, too!).




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