Close cookie details

This site uses cookies. Learn more about cookies.

OverDrive would like to use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your user experience at our Website. One of the cookies we use is critical for certain aspects of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but this could affect certain features or services of the site. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, click here to see our Privacy Policy.

If you do not wish to continue, please click here to exit this site.

Hide notification

  Main Nav
Standard Deviation
Cover of Standard Deviation
Standard Deviation
A novel
Borrow Borrow
TheSkimm’s Best of Skimm Reads
NPR’s Guide to Great Reads
The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Fiction of the Year
Minnesota Public Radio’s The Best Books to Give and Get: Fiction Picks of the Year
An uproarious novel ("Both heart-piercing and, crucially, very funny." —Louise Erdrich, The New York Times) from the celebrated author of Single, Carefree, Mellow about the challenges of a good marriage, the delight and heartache of raising children, and the irresistible temptation to wonder about the path not taken.

When Graham Cavanaugh divorced his first wife it was to marry his girlfriend, Audra, a woman as irrepressible as she is spontaneous and fun. But, Graham learns, life with Audra can also be exhausting, constantly interrupted by chatty phone calls, picky-eater houseguests, and invitations to weddings of people he’s never met. Audra firmly believes that through the sheer force of her personality she can overcome the most socially challenging interactions, shepherding her son through awkward playdates and origami club, and even deciding to establish a friendship with Graham’s first wife, Elspeth.  Graham isn't sure he understands why Audra longs to be friends with the woman he divorced. After all, former spouses are hard to categorize—are they enemies, old flames, or just people you know really, really well? And as Graham and Audra share dinners, holidays, and late glasses of wine with his first wife he starts to wonder: How can anyone love two such different women? Did I make the right choice? Is there a right choice? A hilarious and rueful debut novel of love, marriage, infidelity, and origami, Standard Deviation never deviates from the superb.
TheSkimm’s Best of Skimm Reads
NPR’s Guide to Great Reads
The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Fiction of the Year
Minnesota Public Radio’s The Best Books to Give and Get: Fiction Picks of the Year
An uproarious novel ("Both heart-piercing and, crucially, very funny." —Louise Erdrich, The New York Times) from the celebrated author of Single, Carefree, Mellow about the challenges of a good marriage, the delight and heartache of raising children, and the irresistible temptation to wonder about the path not taken.

When Graham Cavanaugh divorced his first wife it was to marry his girlfriend, Audra, a woman as irrepressible as she is spontaneous and fun. But, Graham learns, life with Audra can also be exhausting, constantly interrupted by chatty phone calls, picky-eater houseguests, and invitations to weddings of people he’s never met. Audra firmly believes that through the sheer force of her personality she can overcome the most socially challenging interactions, shepherding her son through awkward playdates and origami club, and even deciding to establish a friendship with Graham’s first wife, Elspeth.  Graham isn't sure he understands why Audra longs to be friends with the woman he divorced. After all, former spouses are hard to categorize—are they enemies, old flames, or just people you know really, really well? And as Graham and Audra share dinners, holidays, and late glasses of wine with his first wife he starts to wonder: How can anyone love two such different women? Did I make the right choice? Is there a right choice? A hilarious and rueful debut novel of love, marriage, infidelity, and origami, Standard Deviation never deviates from the superb.
Available formats-
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB eBook
Languages:-
Copies-
  • Available:
    1
  • Library copies:
    1
Levels-
  • ATOS:
  • Lexile:
  • Interest Level:
  • Text Difficulty:


Excerpts-
  • From the book Chapter | One

    It had begun to seem to Graham, in this, the twelfth year of his second marriage, that he and his wife lived in parallel universes. And worse, it seemed his universe was lonely and arid, and hers was densely populated with armies of friends and acquaintances and other people he did not know.

    Here they were grocery shopping in Fairway on a Saturday morning, a normal married thing to do together—­although, ­Graham could not help noticing, they were not doing it together. His wife, Audra, spent almost the whole time talking to people she knew—­it was like accompanying a visiting dignity of some sort, or maybe a presidential hopeful—­while he did the normal shopping.

    First, in the produce section, they saw some woman with a baby in a stroller and Audra said, “Oh, hi! How are you? Are you going to that thing on Tuesday?” and the woman said, “I don’t know, because there’s that other meeting,” and Audra said, “I thought that got canceled,” and the woman said, “No, it’s still on,” and Audra said, “I wish they wouldn’t double-­book this stuff,” and the woman said, “I know,” and Audra said, “Well, if we don’t go, will everyone say bad things about us?” and the woman said, “Probably,” and it wasn’t that Graham wasn’t paying attention, it wasn’t that he missed the specifics—­it was that there were no specifics, that was the way they actually talked.

    He took his time thumping melons and picking over grapefruit and was actually rewarded for being forced to linger by remembering to buy green grapes, which weren’t on the list.

    “Who was that?” he asked when Audra rejoined him.

    “Who?” Audra said. She was peering into the shopping cart.

    “That woman you just said hello to.”

    “Oh, she has a girl in Matthew’s class,” Audra said, selecting an apple. “And a five-­year-­old and a toddler and that baby, if you can believe it. But no more, because when the baby was only a week old, she had her husband get a vasectomy. Just made the arrangements and woke him that morning and said, ‘Guess what? You’ve got a doctor’s appointment.’ And he went!”

    She took a bite of the apple. Audra was forty-­one—­a slender woman with a not-­quite-­perfectly oval face. In fact, Graham sometimes thought, all of Audra was not-­quite. Her eyes were not quite brown but had stalled at hazel, her lips were not quite full enough to be lush, her eyebrows were not quite high enough to be called arched, her chin-­length hair was not quite auburn, and its messy waves were not quite ringlets. She’d worn her hair this length for as long as Graham had known her. Apparently, if she cut it shorter, it curled up around her face and made her head look overly round, and if she grew it longer, the ends got too heavy and she had to have lots of layers put in. (This was marriage: you started out thinking you’d married the most interesting person in all the world and twelve years later, your head was full of useless hair facts. Of course, there was other stuff in there—­some milestones, having a baby, buying a house—­but that was basically the essence of it.) Audra was not quite beautiful but her liveliness kept her far away from plain.

    One aisle over, in the breakfast cereals department, Audra suddenly stopped the cart. A young man behind them glared but Audra paid no attention.

    “Oh! Hey!” Audra...
About the Author-
  • KATHERINE HEINY is the author of Single, Carefree Mellow, a collection of short stories. Her fiction has been published in The New YorkerThe Atlantic, PloughsharesGlimmer Train, and many other places. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and children.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    March 20, 2017
    This first novel from Heiny (Single, Carefree, Mellow) meanders cheerfully along, making up for its relative lack of action with its humor and insight into characters. Introverted, middle-aged Graham has been married for 12 years to his talkative, younger second wife Audra, and he’s beginning to wonder whether they’re really suited for each other, or if he should have stuck with his “tall and slim and regal” attorney ex-wife Elspeth, with whom he’s just begun speaking again. Graham and Audra have a 10-year-old son, Matthew, who is socially awkward and obsessed with origami, and about whom they spend a good deal of their mental energy worrying. They host Thanksgiving for an assortment of quirky characters, including the misfit adults from Matthew’s origami club; take their son and a friend they nickname “Derek Rottweiler” on an ill-fated fishing expedition; and attend an unexpected funeral. Heiny has a flair for peculiar but believable dialogue, and a generous attitude towards even the most inept characters, particularly Graham, whose befuddlement about his life choices and his longing to smooth things out for his son persist throughout the changes in his life. At the heart of the novel is a finely tuned awareness of the fragility of the most seemingly permanent connections and the ambivalence shot through even the hardiest forms of love.

  • Kirkus

    Starred review from March 1, 2017
    In her debut novel, the author of the charming short story collection Single, Carefree, Mellow (2015) matures into new (equally beguiling) terrain, exploring marriage, fidelity, friendship, and parenting.It's easy to see why Graham, one-half of the New York City couple at the center of Heiny's first novel, is enthralled by his wife of 12 years, Audra. While Graham, a medical-venture specialist at a venture capitalist firm, is steady, stable, and fond of "routine and order," Audra, a freelance graphic designer 15 years his junior, is an unrestrained force of good nature. Audra's vivacity offers a stark contrast to Graham's emotionally cool first wife, Elspeth, with whom the couple reconnects. Audra draws all manner of friends and random strangers into her orbit with her chatty sociability and almost unwavering cheer. She cannot make it through a trip to the grocery store without running into a million people she knows (Graham says it's like shopping with "a visiting dignity") and bonding big-time with the checkout guy, is constantly inviting people (a woman she barely knows from her book group whose husband has been unfaithful; their building's afternoon doorman, for a reason Graham cannot recall) to move into their den or eat at their table. Audra is forever on the phone, helping out with PTA activities at the school attended by their 10-year-old son, Matthew, who has Asperger's and is some kind of origami prodigy, or chatting with her best friend, Lorelei. Like Graham, the reader may be deeply enchanted with, if also somewhat mystified by, Audra. She's a wonderful character, as are many of those assembled around her, and the series of minor challenges she and Graham face (potential infidelities, possible pregnancy, challenging play dates, and other parental concerns)--she pluckily; he sheepishly--make for reading as delicious as the meals Graham is forever called into service to cook for whomever Audra happens to have invited by that night. To quibble, the episodic, somewhat attenuated plot lacks a degree of urgency and loses a bit of steam midway through, but it regains its footing by the end. And to spend 300-plus pages with Heiny's wry voice and colorful cast of characters is to love them, truly. An amusingly engaging take on long-term marriage with a lovably loopy character at its center.

    COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Booklist

    April 15, 2017
    Heiny's first novel, following her story collection, Single, Carefree, Mellow (2015), offers an absorbing character study of modern-day relationships and parenthood. Graham lives in New York with his younger second wife, Audra, and their 10-year-old son, Matthew. Graham is the more reserved of the pair, while the loquacious Audra seems to makes friends with every person she meets. One day Graham unexpectedly runs into his ex-wife, Elspeth, whom he left for Audra. At Audra's urging, they set up a double date with Elspeth and her current boyfriend. Subsequent encounters between the two couples lead Graham to begin to examine and question the state of his current relationship as he ends up spending more time with Elspeth. Meanwhile, Graham and Audra struggle to find the best way to parent Andrew, whose unique social needs present all kinds of challenges. Heiny's characters are authentic, witty, and infused with life, and they hold their secrets close, whether to protect the ones they love or merely themselves. Heiny's novel offers a nuanced consideration of commitment, acceptance, and the desire for personal connection.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

  • Library Journal

    December 1, 2016

    Full of life, love, and projects, Graham's new wife, Audra, is the polar opposite of first wife Elspeth, which complicates things when Graham and Audra need to ask Elspeth for help. Heiny debuted big with the collection Single, Carefree, Mellow.

    Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Library Journal

    March 15, 2017

    Manhattan husband and father Graham Cavanaugh knows that he shouldn't compare his second wife, Audra, to first wife, Elspeth, but the contrast is too pronounced to ignore. Audra is always socializing and insisting that Graham participate even as he wistfully yearns for his more orderly existence with Elspeth. Yet, life with Graham and Audra's son, Matthew, a middle schooler with Asperger's, necessitates a wide social safety net, whether with Matthew's origami club members or with the few friends he makes at school. Graham simply can't revert to his Elspeth days but must jump on the crazy train with vivacious Audra and enjoy the ride. In this debut novel, (after the short story collection Single, Carefree, Mellow), Heiny handles the sensitive material with a deft, always humorous touch. VERDICT Contemporary fiction fans fond of urban settings and humor in the vein of Nora Ephron or Nick Hornsby should appreciate this tale of city life and marriage, while those searching for characters on the Asperger's spectrum could find young Matthew, portrayed as high functioning but challenging, authentic and recognizable as he navigates various connections with his parents and others. [See Prepub Alert, 11/14/16.]--Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast

    Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Title Information+
  • Publisher
    Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • OverDrive Read
    Release date:
  • EPUB eBook
    Release date:
Digital Rights Information+
  • Copyright Protection (DRM) required by the Publisher may be applied to this title to limit or prohibit printing or copying. File sharing or redistribution is prohibited. Your rights to access this material expire at the end of the lending period. Please see Important Notice about Copyrighted Materials for terms applicable to this content.

Status bar:

You've reached your checkout limit.

Visit your Checkouts page to manage your titles.

Close

You already have this title checked out.

Want to go to your Checkouts?

Close

Recommendation Limit Reached.

You've reached the maximum number of titles you can recommend at this time. You can recommend up to 0 titles every 0 day(s).

Close

Sign in to recommend this title.

Recommend your library consider adding this title to the Digital Collection.

Close

Enhanced Details

Close
Close

Limited availability

Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget.

is available for days.

Once playback starts, you have hours to view the title.

Close

Permissions

Close

The OverDrive Read format of this eBook has professional narration that plays while you read in your browser. Learn more here.

Close

Holds

Total holds:


Close

Restricted

Some format options have been disabled. You may see additional download options outside of this network.

Close

MP3 audiobooks are only supported on macOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) through 10.14 (Mojave). Learn more about MP3 audiobook support on Macs.

Close

Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.

Close

Device Compatibility Notice

The OverDrive app is required for this format on your current device.

Close

Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen

Close

You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.

To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.

Close

Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.

There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.

Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.

Close

You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.

Close

This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.

Close

An unexpected error has occurred.

If this problem persists, please contact support.

Close

Close

NOTE: Barnes and Noble® may change this list of devices at any time.

Close
Buy it now
and help our library WIN!
Standard Deviation
Standard Deviation
A novel
Katherine Heiny
Choose a retail partner below to buy this title for yourself.
A portion of this purchase goes to support your library.
Close
Close

There are no copies of this issue left to borrow. Please try to borrow this title again when a new issue is released.

Close
Barnes & Noble Sign In |   Sign In

You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page.

If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."

The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."

You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.

Accept to ContinueCancel