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Normal People Don't Live Like This

A Novel in Stories (Deluxe Edition)

Dylan Landis

$39.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English
Soho Press
12 May 2026
""Wonderful! Leah and Helen are authentic, vulnerable characters, whose intimate truths are exposed at perfect, unexpected moments.""―Elizabeth Strout

A novel-in-stories by one of the form's very best, following a teenager and her mother navigating the tumult of New York City in the 1970s

""Wonderful! Leah and Helen are authentic, vulnerable characters, whose intimate truths are exposed at perfect, unexpected moments.""―Elizabeth Strout

A jolting, sensual novel in stories that traces the crises, cruelties and passions of girls and mothers in the chaos of 1970s Greenwich Village, now in a deluxe edition featuring a reader's guide and a new, previously unpublished story.

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. It is joined by a new novel in stories, List of All Possible Desires, and a deluxe edition of the 2014 novel Rainey Royal. 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.
By:  
Imprint:   Soho Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 209mm,  Width: 139mm, 
Weight:   369g
ISBN:   9781641298001
ISBN 10:   1641298006
Pages:   240
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

Dylan Landis is the author of three works of fiction in the Rainey Royal Cycle set in 1970s Greenwich Village- the forthcoming List of All Possible Desires; Rainey Royal; and Normal People Don't Live Like This. Her work has appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and other anthologies. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction and lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for Normal People Don't Live Like This: A Novel in Stories (Deluxe Edition)

Praise for Normal People Don't Live Like This ""Dylan Landis has a keen eye for the right detail, and is a master of deciding what to include—and what to leave out. Leah and her enigmatic mother Helen are authentic, vulnerable characters, whose private truths are exposed at perfect, unexpected moments. Normal People Don’t Live Like This is a wonderful, intriguing, and original debut."" —Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge “Tense and intense, Landis’s prose is as taut and alluring as her characters.” —Newsday “I can’t think of the last time I read a debut collection so powerfully alive.” —Time Out New York ""Dylan Landis has a gift for creating characters . . . Watch her very carefully. Once you can create characters like Leah (or Angeline, Rainey and Helen), there’s no stopping you."" —Los Angeles Times ""The characters in Dylan Landis’s debut story collection, Normal People Don’t Live Like This, are blessedly extraordinary."" —Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair “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


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