Published in 1971, B.S. Johnson’s House Mother Normal recounts a nursing home’s ‘Community Evening’ from the perspective of various residents, each revealing different facets of the depraved events that transpire. Facing homelessness in the event of the facility’s closure, the residents avoid reporting their conditions, choosing instead to live out their final days in House Mother Normal’s care despite its many inadequacies, violences, and other assaults on dignity.

This is no simple exercise in outrage, however. When the novel culminates in a chapter told from House Mother Normal’s own perspective, attempts to read the moralism of good vs. evil into the text are fundamentally upended.

Highlights include: multiple perspectives on the quality of the food, an awful game of ‘Pass the Parcel’, casual yet mostly off-camera bestiality with Ralphie the Dog, jousting, a clever use of cognitive assessment scores, and the prevailing malaise of the 1970s.

We were put onto this book by Isabel Waidner, who reuses House Mother Normal and Ralphie the dog as characters in their excellent novel. Read both!

Perfect for: Those who wish to see the world as it is plainly, without hiding in mental abstractions or simply turning away in disgust.

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