Rating: 
Summary: Mom vs. Mom?
Review: A wonderful story. I don't like to give away how stories are told but I have to say I wasn't expecting what happened in this book. I am amazed at how much I loved these characters. This is one of those books you don't want to end. This was my first book by Leclaire and it will not be my last. She is a wonderful heartfelt writer that makes me excited to find her books.
Rating:
Summary: Mom vs. Mom?
Review: A wonderful story. I don't like to give away how stories are told but I have to say I wasn't expecting what happened in this book. I am amazed at how much I loved these characters. This is one of those books you don't want to end. This was my first book by Leclaire and it will not be my last. She is a wonderful heartfelt writer that makes me excited to find her books.
Rating:
Summary: Finding friendship where you least expect it
Review: Anne LeClaire is truly a gifted storyteller. This is the first novel I have read by her and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Opal Gates, a young unwed mother, and Rose Nelson, a middle-aged homemaker, could not be two more different people. But when Opal moves north from her home in New Zion, North Carolina to make a fresh start in the small town of Normal, Massachusetts she and Rose are soon thrown together as next door neighbors for better and for worse. There's an old saying that goes "you never know who your friends are," a fact that Opal and Rose soon discover as difficult times come around for each of them and they feel the need to lean on each other. This is an excellent and very well written story.
Rating:
Summary: an excellent read.
Review: Entering Normal by Anne D. Leclaire is one of those books that finds you reading late into the night and asking for more. As I was about to finish this book, I was sorry I couldn't be reading it for the first time. I was so sorry to see the pages almost turning themselves for a book which turned out to be a very memorable read.Opal is the 20 year old unmarried mother of a five year old son named Zack. Refusing to live with her critical and overbearing mother any longer, Rose rolls dice from a Monopoly game and decides to fill up her car according to the number which appears. Wherever her car runs out of gas is where she is plannign on staying. And soon enough she finds herself and Zack entering Normal, Mass. Moving next door to Rose and Ned, Opal settles into hometown life spending time with her son
and making dolls for a toy store in town. Rose on the other hand isn't doing much of anything. Shrouded in grief from a tragic death five years before, Rose's feels as though she has little in her life to look forward to and ignores Opal and Zack. But when Opal needs Rose's help, Rose manages to set aside her grief. How these two women help each other to be there when life turns on a dime for them is the focus of this book which I really enjoyed. The book packs many an emotional punch and shows readers how friends can and do become family. Rose and Opal are two wonderful characters who I miss already and will never forget. Similar to themes explored both by Jacquelyn Mitchard and Alice Hoffman, Anne D. Leclaire is a new to me author but one whom I plan on reading in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing
Review: I couldn't put this book down. I totally related to Opal, and as a mother, have felt like her on several occasions. This book had me awake reading it all night during the week. Opal made me want to fight her battles. I wanted to pat her on the shoulder and say, it'll be alright. I wanted to call her mean momma and tell her off. Total emotional involvement.
Entering Normal was well paced, The characters were well developed. I like that the writer used forshadowing and writing techniques that I learned about in school. The plot developed in a realistic way.
Both Opal and Rose were people I knew and had been on a few occassions.
Rating:
Summary: the emotions in this book will leap off the pages!
Review: I did not enjoy the amount of swearing Opal's character did. For example --the line says i like sex --instead of ending it like that where we all get the point it goes on to say -- I was born to [swear word]. I'm not a fan of reading a lot of swearing so that turned me off a bit. I couldn't identify with either of the characters either. Rose was very closed up and of course much older and Opal was described as okay looking, 20 w/a 5 yr old son and a shade of red hair that has never been cut. I kept picturing her unattractive with a brassy mouth that if she didn't watch it she was going to lose her son.
I kept wishing (and hope before the book started) that Rose and Opal would have been close friends and by the middle of the book I realized they weren't going in that direction (at least not til the very end). I was wanting to see the older woman show the younger girl some of the loops and have them be a strange pair of friends that people couldn't see how they were friends. The book didn't flow very well for me either. Aside from switching points of view every chapter, they would go back and relay the same scene from another character's point of view--made it hard to enjoy when you're trying to re-read what you already read. The writing style was enjoyable, easy to read and finished in two days. There was a decent enough hook to keep me reading and find out what happened. I was sad the judge made Opal move. I didn't think her ex-lover guy was that sincere in wanting to see his son, I think her mom put him up to it and she was very verbally and mentally abusive. I felt very sorry for Opal having to move back with her. (Very glad at least Rose was going to move with her) Was sorry Rose's dh died; I was hoping that the allusion to Rose having saved $10,000 was so she could tell Ned and they could sell the shop and finally move to Florida. I also hated she never told him about the professor, would of like to see Ned kick his butt and have Rose be aware of the love he still held for her even though years later she is mourning her son. But I guess that helped Rose's decision to move with Opal (although Opal should have married her boyfriend to show that a married couple could take care of her son better than shared custody w/a guy who doesn't care).
Wouldn't read this book again, wouldn't recommend it to a friend.
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Summary: Multi-faceted Motherhood
Review: No two mothers are alike; yet the incredibly strong bonds with their children are something most mothers have in common. In this book of two wildly different women, it is really the maternal bond that takes center stage. Barely out of childhood herself, Opal still instinctively values, cares for and clings to her son. Rose was a model mother, but now clings to her grief as the only link left to her teenage son, killed in a tragic accident. As the story unfolds, it's hard to put down, just from the sheer weight of the emotion it evokes. Good writing is in the details and this book is filled with those subtle touches that speak to every mother's heart -- the smell of a newly bathed baby, the joy of watching a sleeping child, the tension of fear/anticipation that accompanies each step in their outward journey away from you. As the author of a book for mothers, NEW PSALMS FOR NEW MOMS: A KEEPSAKE JOURNAL (Judson Press), I ached with Rose at her unimaginable loss and triumphed with Opal as she tried to make a new life for herself and her son. This book is endearing and enduring. It helps us to see one another with love and caring, not with the labels neatly sewn onto all of us by society. In this way, a young, unwed mother and an older, bereaved mother can find that common ground where love and caring forge new friendships, new life and new hope.
Rating: 
Summary: A Brave Mother
Review: Opal Gates is a single mom with a five year old son. She believes in signs. One day at a family picnic, she envisions herself and her life going on forever just like it is, and she decides to make a change. With the toss of a die that rolls a three, she uses three tanks of gas to arrive with her son and their belongings in Normal, Massachusetts, another sign, she believes, that she had done the right thing in leaving her controlling mother and useless boyfriend who is also her son's father. What follows is a tale that is both funny and touchingly sad. Opal moves into a house next to Rose Nelson and her husband. Rose is a tragic character that never got over the death of her sixteen year old son. Rose has shut out the world for forever it seems, but nothing is forever in Normal, Massachusetts, and you will find yourself wishing this story did indeed go on forever.
Rating:
Summary: A new start
Review: Opal Gates is ready for a change, so she throws the dice from her Monopoly game. The number she rolls, she decides, is the number of tanks of gas she will allow herself in her escape from a dead-end life in North Carolina. Opal rolls a three, and three tanks later, she finds herself in Normal, Massachusetts. Opal believes in signs, and if there ever was a sign that didn't need much interpretation, this was it: a town named Normal. Opal arrives with her five-year-old son, Zack, and sets up housekeeping in a furnished rental house. Opal doesn't know exactly what she and Zack will do in Normal, but she knows it has to be better than the place she left. She doesn't know anyone in Normal, but even that loneliness is better than having to deal with her distanced, disapproving mother, her ineffectual father, and her high school lover, Billy, who is Zack's father. In Normal, Opal feels an immediate kinship with her neighbor, Rose Nelson, a middle-aged woman who still intensely grieves the loss of her own son, Todd, in a car accident five years before. In the tradition of Mona Simpson's "Anywhere But Here" and Billie Letts' "Where the Heart Is," author Anne D. LeClaire tells a story of a woman who only knows it is time to start over; a woman who might not have housekeeping skills or social skills, or even the best vocabulary, but instead has a good heart, an unbiding love for her children, and the courage to change her life; and two women who find in each other the friendship and love they have both been seeking.
Rating: 
Summary: Entering Normal~
Review: Opal is tired of dealing with the dead-beat father of her 5 year old son Zach, and her overbearing mother, so she packs up the car and heads out of town, not sure of her destination. A huge believer in signs, Opal decides that she will call home, wherever 3 tanks of gas take her. Irony hits, as at the end of those 3 tanks, she approaches a sign that says, Entering Normal, which is in fact, just what Opal wants, a sense of normalcy. In Normal, Massachussetts, Opal & Zach have moved in next door to Ned & Rose Nelson, a couple in their 50's who have lost their son Todd in a tragic accident. Rose & Opal are complete opposites, Rose a conservative, inhibited woman, who has given up on life and wallows in grief over the loss of her son. Opal is an in your face, rowdy type, who swears like a sailor. What could possibly bring these two very different women into each other's lives & make them friends? Entering Normal is a story of motherhood, friendship, loss, and relationships, about the ups and downs of life, and how we find the strength to keep on going. The writing was well done, this is an easy read, and the pages turn quickly. However, the character development and plot line were only mediocre at times. This was an entertaining read, but I wasn't wow-ed by the end. I think LeClaire has talent as a writer, and I will try reading some of her other works. Overall, I would give this novel 3.5 out of 5 stars..it was a fair, entertaining read.
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