Things are not going well for Andy. His wife left him for a paramedic, his mother’s is trying to be a Fox news anchor preaching the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, his father is obsessed with the squirrels sabotaging his bird feeders, his grandfather is dying, his brother is a jerk, and the one person who is seemingly kind to him isn’t at all who she says she is. When Andy returns home to Omaha to visit his dying grandfather he struggles to come to terms with his own issues while becoming intertwined with his family’s glitter bombed drama. We’re all Damaged by Matthew Norman reminds us that no one’s family is flawless and being an adult in no way means you have it all together.

Tri-City News: A Good Read Posted Date: December 28, 2018.
Dysfunctional Families for the Holidays ( )

Not the type of book I would normally pick up, but this turned out to be a pretty good book. The book is full of quirky characters. The budding relationship between Andy and Daisy was sweet. I loved the randomness of his dad's fight with the squirrels. Andy has come home because his grandfather is dying, and while at home, he tries to repair old relationships. The results are satisfying. Overall a nice little book. ( )

The CD, read by Scott Merriman, was so well done! His voice was just perfect for the character of Andy. The story was just plain fun---well put together, going up and down and side ways!! ( )

Enjoyable mess

I really like this book. Nothing intellectual or earth shattering. Just good story, with great fuckup lives. Which happens from time to time.


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We’re All Damaged by Matthew Norman


In a year of charged political rhetoric, often contrasting monochromatic life in the Heartland with the diversity of the coasts, We’re All Damaged comes as a wry, literary statement on the magnitude and nuances of that divide. Pitch perfect in voice, funny enough to leave you snort-laughing in a Starbucks (Yes, it happened.), Norman’s second novel proves his successful debut, Domestic Violets, was no fluke. Yes, Matthew Norman is one of the funniest writers going, but there’s more here than just laughs. Norman gives his readers social commentary and surprisingly elegant story, wrapping it all in the voice of a character you can’t help rooting for, Andy Carter.

After an ugly divorce, once-steady thirtysomething Andy flees his hometown of Omaha, destination NYC. Once there, he works as a bartender, drinks heavily, and licks his wounds, the city’s scale affording him anonymity. But as Andy’s grandfather’s life nears its end, he’s forced to return to Omaha and the raft of problems he thought he’d escaped, everything from his ex-wife’s affair and his conservative, talk-show-hosting mom to his conventionally successful brother and the best friend whose wedding he wrecked. Soon, though, there’s one more complication; a tattooed amateur life coach named Daisy, a nod to The Great Gatsby in more ways than one.

Norman’s topic is the everyman, the realities of chasing the sort of “successful” life that, in many ways, is still the American Dream. Though the economic scale isn’t so grand as that of Gatsby, Andy’s dreams and the pitfalls that come with them are still recognizable as foundational to our culture. As are the novel’s quintessentially American obsessions with identity and personal reinvention, considerations that require us to see We’re All Damaged very much as an ironic, postmodern counterpoint to Fitzgerald (by way of Vonnegut). This book’s success isn’t simply as comedy—or even cultural, literary, and political criticism—but in the surprising humanity of its ending, a quality that more than any other points to why we’ll be reading Matthew Norman for years to come.

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/kbaumeister/2016/12/the-nervous-breakdowns-re... ( )