The World as It Is

by Norma Klein

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449218562
• ISBN13: 9780449218563
• Release Date: July 1990
• Publisher: Fawcett Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Life isn't fair

Sigh.This is another well-written book by Norma Klein, whose stories I have loved since grade school.The setting is a hospital for mental patients, set in New York in the late 1980s. Protagonists include not only patients but a doctor as well.The doctor has many of the same types of pitfalls as the patients portrayed. The reader cannot really be sure what keeps him on one side of the stethescope, if you will, and the patients on the other. THAT is what isn't fair.Norma Klein paints warm, human characters. She portrays sex as it is in real life, and not as some authors do (as something to be purchased by the hour). You find yourself cheering for her characters, as tho they are people you know.When I finished the book, I turned to the last page and learned that Norma Klein is the "late" Norma Klein. Her writing will be missed.

Wrenching. Realistic. Painful...but not without hope.

I believe this was Norma Klein's last book, and it made me miss her even more...this multi-layered, overlapping account of people in & out of a supposedly reputable mental institution delves into the human psyche and the capacity for good & evil in everyone. The patients are portrayed warmly and sympathetically, and most of the hospital staff much less so...But everyone is unapologetically and honestly revealed to the core. I'm not getting this across right, but I CAN'T RECOMMEND THIS BOOK HIGHLY ENOUGH. It succeeds on every level, and powerfully displays Norma Klein's ability to see into the human heart without cringing - but always forgiving.