Extraordinary People

by Paul Gervais

As Sam, a young boy with a never-present father and a wild mother, grows from a boy into an adult, he reveals his concerns and observations as he recounts the events in his family life

Genres: Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1991

Reviews

[Jody · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a few chapters (which read more like short stories) to get into this book. I found myself thinking of some of the characters as more unusual than extraordinary. By the end, I had warmed to the author's approach and found some characters to indeed be extraordinary. Lots of questions of human relationships are explored in thoughtful ways. For just one example, toward the end, we ride along with a couple on one of their drives in the country, when they mention that one seems always to be the driver and the other always the passenger, regardless of who is actually driving the vehicle. How many couples are this way? Would it be better to switch off who is "driving"? Is it possible (or tolerable) for the driver to learn how and when to relax and sometimes be the passenger?

[Dan Downing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some caveats: This was my second go-around with this book, the first being when it was newly published. Secondly, the author was a college classmate.
That being said, I was amazed at how much I remembered the second time around. Whenever I have thought of this book over the past 25 years I have recalled the last pages. I was gratified and pleased to find so much value and humanity in the first two hundred pages during this second reading.

[John Treat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of this novel --but not the second, with its predictable tragedies and two American homosexuals picking berries in their Tuscan garden-- is the half to read. The descriptions of Sam and Cliff and Meg when they were young are marvelous. Gervais really nails what it is like for a boy to have a brother, and a mother once so close to them she was destined to drift apart.