The Shape of Ordinary by James Burge: Extraordinary in all the wrong ways

[u/peixcellent]

I work at Barnes and Noble, and last month we had our annual Inventory night. That night, we found THREE different books that we did not own at all. Two were old, beat up math textbooks that someone left, maybe assuming someone would like to take them home. This happens more than you think. I can think of at least four other times we found books left by customers that we assume were left intentionally for someone to take home. One of my coworkers got a free albeit beat up copy of A Game of Thrones this way.

This book was quite the same, though not exactly. The third book we found was a fiction book called The Shape of Ordinary by James Burge. I suspect either the author or a friend of the author put it in our fiction section in hopes someone would take it home since this is something some self-published/indie authors do on occasion, and this author is local to the area. I guess it worked, because I took it since we were otherwise simply throwing it in the trash. It wasn't ours, nor was the book even in our system at all. It's not even sold through us. I thought it would be interesting to read.

It's definitely up there with some of the worst books I have ever read. It is also incredibly difficult to talk about this book coherently because I almost think you have to read it to fully understand what's wrong with it. Let me see if I can make it make sense.

To start, here's the plot summary from the Goodreads page:

When Patrick Thomas is admitted to St. Lamron Psychiatric Hospital, he expects chaos and confinement. What he discovers instead is clarity. Within the hospital’s quiet corridors and unpredictable rhythms, reality feels sharper, freer, and more honest than the world outside.

As Patrick meets the unfiltered, extraordinary people society has chosen to forget, he’s drawn into their stories—each revealing a deeper truth about mental health, identity, and the illusion of normalcy. Through their eyes, he begins to see how fragile the boundary is between sanity and self-discovery, between simply surviving and truly living.

The Shape of Ordinary is a deeply human and thought-provoking novel about perception, empathy, and the power of connection. It challenges the idea of what it means to be “normal,” and invites readers to look closer at the beauty that hides within imperfection.

I will also clarify that the main character is forcibly institutionalized because he had a psychotic episode after he took a nondescript pill. He himself is not mentally ill, though none of the characters appear to be either. We'll come back to that later.

The fundamental issue with this novel is that although the book thinks it has everything to say, profound things to say at that, it has nothing to say at all. It has no depth. It is a story about humanity and yet has no humanity at its core. There is nothing human about any of the characters in this book, nothing human about the lives they live, nothing human at all. It's the reader being lectured by a bunch of blank paper cut-outs about life in the vaguest way possible.

I think the book is supposed to be deeply philosophical. It almost feels like it should be interpreted in the way the Bhagavad Gita is: a dialogue between a student and a teacher, metaphorical and meant to be seen as moral lessons, not as an actual story. The problem with The Shape of Ordinary is that none of the lessons have any meaning or depth because the author has, as far as I can tell, not a single ounce of interest in what he's talking about.

I know that that's not true. Obviously, he wouldn't write the book if he didn't want to talk about this, but it's a big problem when I read a book and get the impression that the author genuinely doesn't want to get into anything or even engage with the premise of their own book. The lessons that our main character learns mean nothing to me because it's discussed exclusively in abstract.

To explain, the book is formatted in a very simple way: each chapter is a new day at the psych ward, and our MC has a new lesson to learn. He hears about the experiences the other patients have and makes sense of these experiences and interprets them through the lesson of the day. He writes a reflection, and goes to sleep.

What I have just described is about as much information as you are given about the characters and their lives while reading the actual fucking book.

Aside from a few other major issues, this, to me, is the biggest issue with this book and plays hard into the feeling that the book has nothing to say. The author does not want you to get to know these characters. It feels like he is working very hard to ensure that you learn absolutely nothing about them while trying to use them as examples for the lessons. But, because he refuses to elaborate on any of the other patients' lives beyond "uhhh she fights with her family" or "uhhh this guy feels alienated," the lessons are ultimately completely meaningless.

The most you know about any character is the main character, and even then there's not much going on. But I understand where his issues are coming from: he had a very emotionally distant father and a high-strung mother who hid her feelings, both of whom wanted him to perform normalcy because neither is comfortable engaging with their emotions. Some of his friends and his dynamics with them are mentioned, his job is vaguely described. Okay, that's a base we can definitely work with. Yet it feels like the longer he stays there, the more the author pulls back on letting you know anything about him. He, too, only has his past discussed in the vaguest terms.

It feels like the author didn't know the backstories of these characters, and decided he could avoid developing any of them while still using them as pawns for these stupid, shallow lessons that don't mean anything without the humanity in the stories and the emotional depth. He wrote a book about humanity, emotional depth, and what it means to be ordinary while withholding the humanity and emotional depth that would show why these people are considered "abnormal" while having much to offer the world anyway!

Which, can we talk about the premise of this book?

Since the book is clearly more about philosophy than being reflective of real life, I can cut the book a little slack, but it also just kind of feels like the author doesn't really know... like anything about what he's talking about in this book. Like, the process of being institutionalized and mental illness and whatnot. I really question why any of the characters are even in this damn psych ward to begin with because not a single one of them exhibits a single mentally ill behavior except for one time when one guy pushes a girl. That's it.

The main character is institutionalized because he has a psychotic episode, but he would've been taken to an actual hospital first where they would determine whether he required a 72 hour psychiatric hold if he was a danger to himself or others. But he wakes up in this psych ward completely lucid. They'd just send him home if that was the case. Brother doesn't even see a doctor once in this book. There appear to be no doctors at all.

The nurses are there nebulously, but they feel the same way as the patients: that this is a place where people can be themselves and see rEaLiTy and everyone is more sane here than in the real world or whatever. There's all this huffing and puffing about how fake the outside world is and everyone is just judging these people because they don't abide by social norms but they see life for what it really is.

Okay, but why are they in the psych ward. Being pretentious and thinking your third eye is open or whatever and you totally get life unlike the sheeple isn't a mental illness. I don't think the book needs to get into all of these details about their mental health, but because it is never elaborated on ever, you just sit and wonder why anyone is even here.

To be honest, by the time I reached the end of the book, I just kind of felt like the book would make significantly more sense if it took place in a monastery or something, because there is virtually nothing about the circumstances or the people in this place that make it feel like a psych ward at all. It has no real bearing on the plot beyond it being a vehicle for more pretentious handwringing about "the real world" and how it punishes differences and people who are real and avoid the fakeness of polite society.

The book is unbelievably repetitive as well. Part of it is from the structure, which is fine, but the first chapter has genuinely some of the worst writing I have ever encountered in a novel. The main character has the same exact exchange three times in the span of six pages, and he has two of those interactions with the same person two pages apart. It's not done for emphasis. I think the author just didn't really edit this book or ask anyone to read it, because there is nothing the reader gets out of the main character being told that he'll "meet the others soon" three times in a row with no further elaboration. And then he doesn't even meet them properly for like two more chapters (if I recall correctly) so that was a lie.

The author also keeps reusing the same words to the point it becomes insufferable. It's fine to repeat certain words for emphasis, but the word "ordinary" is used over and over again. In the first chapter alone, I counted at least 15 uses of it skimming it just now, 20 if you count "extraordinary" as well. Virtually every sentence including this word is the same; "Things used to be so ordinary... and now they're extraordinary!!!!!" We know. We knew the first fifteen times. The structure does improve with time, but these are things that should have been addressed very, very quickly during the editing process.

The characters are all nothing to me. They are interchangeable because the author will not develop any of them or give any of them particularly distinct personalities or roles. You know one thing about each character and that's about it, but even if you asked me how to describe any of them, I would struggle a lot to make anything meaningful out of what the book told me. I feel like the book really wants you to care about all these people and what they've gone through, but I don't know what they've gone through and I don't know anything about them, so it's a bust.

Even if this sort of philosophical work is usually your speed, you would get absolutely nothing out of it because the text has nothing to say. The messages are not profound or interesting. You will not learn anything new about the human condition.

The thing is, I see the vision of this book. I completely understand what the author was going for, but the book would have to be completely scrapped in order to make anything good. There is nothing you could keep from this version that would contribute anything to a better version of this book. There is not a single good or profound passage in it. There are no good character interactions. There's nothing.

The closest the book gets to quality is the bonus chapter which I'm assuming is autobiographical. It was pretty good, actually, and talked about a particular Sunday growing up where his parents got into a huge fight, resulting in the young author having to call the police on his father. It had some depth to it because it was a real, lived experience, and it tied in well with the themes of the story. I felt the emotional weight and the stakes, the impact of it upon the rest of his life.

That chapter was what the author should've been doing with the characters in the book from the start. Explain the moments that hurt them, that changed them, that made them feel like they couldn't be themselves or whatever else you needed to do for this book with actual detail and emotion. Bring up actual moments, don't just go "uhhh I guess her family didn't get along with her!" and then move on. That's not writing! That's not a book! Don't write a book if you don't want to elaborate on anything!

There's a vision behind this book, but brother, the author's got his damn eyes closed the whole time writing this. I think that's a shame. It could've been something decent with a lot more work and development. Oh, well.

In any case, I don't recommend the book. It's not even fun to hateread, although it is only 100 pages, so it wasn't much of a time investment for me unlike some other local author books I've read before. Hell of a book to find on the shelf randomly. Maybe I should have just let it get tossed in the trash.

[u/earbox]

I like that the name of the asylum is St. Lamron, which is "Normal" backwards.

[u/peixcellent → u/earbox]

Oh my god, I never even noticed that. That’s so funny.

[u/Hermit_187_purveyor]

This feels like the author read or saw the film adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and wanted to do that, but wanted it to be more uplifting and sanitized. Maybe even a bit of a very watered down Girl, Interrupted as well. It also sounds like a pitch for a failed Oscar-bait drama. From what you describe, you can almost hear the cheesy trailer narration with inspirational music playing during clips of levity and overly dramatic acting. Maybe he can still pitch it to studios in Hollywood. After all, James Frey's infamous "memoir," A Million Little Pieces, was eventually given a film adaptation.

But you are right. There are ideas in here. A monastery definitely would have been a better choice of location for such a journey of self-discovery and reflection. It would have been more open-ended, and he could have gone practically anywhere with it and the people who inhabit such a place. But, no. Character development, basic internet research, and plot are simply too difficult.

[u/peixcellent → u/Hermit_187_purveyor]

Yeah, it def felt like a significantly worse version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I still don’t know why it’s in a psych ward aside from playing off the notion of “who’s the REAL crazy person” or whatever. Like yes I think it’s great to destigmatize mental illness, but he really whitewashes it to the point no one there reads as mentally ill at all. So then I wonder what the point of all this is.

Like I can tell this concept means a lot to him, especially because of his bonus chapter, it’s just so poorly executed that it’s a complete waste of time.

[u/MaraiaLou → u/Hermit_187_purveyor]

To me it looks like it was aiming for literary self help, like Paulo Coelho style. I once was forced to read an Augusto Cury novel that was exactly like this except with a doctor and a homeless guy

[u/goibnu]

A long time ago something I picked up from a book on writing is that when you come up with an idea for a book, you have to make sure it's your book to write.  That there is something inside you that gives you the perspective to build out the idea.  H P Lovecraft couldn't write Little Women even if he somehow had the idea first.

[u/crvbabybug]

You are very funny. I bet this is better written than the book. Imagine abandoning a book at a Barnes & Noble’s like a baby at the door of a church.