Normal People: A Novel

I really enjoyed this book. 4.5 stars Strengths: -Page turner. It hooked me right away, and never let go. -Emotional complexity. It felt nice to get to know the characters deeply. They were well-developed. -Perceptive criticisms. There were some nice commentaries on status games, art, and douchey people Things that bothered me: -Kinky-shaming. I’m kinky, and I think this book portrays kink in a pretty negative, and extremely narrow light. BDSM is already a very misunderstood subculture, and this book just added fuel to that fire -Plot relies on bad communication. I’m so sick of romance books and shows developing a plot based on characters’ inability to be honest w how they feel and what they want 😵‍💫. And this book fell prey to that -The book jumps from present to past a lot. It felt a little unnecessary, and confusing at times. I'd often forget we were in the past, and then I'd get brought back to the present. -Try-hard. Just a little bit. I can't pin down why, but I had the theory tha tthe author really wanted to come off as perceptive and clever. But some of her descriptions just felt like she was trying too hard. -No quotations! Minor thing, but when characters speak, there are no quotation marks! I never really adjusted and didn't like this style edit. All in all though, great book. I enjoyed it a lot and will definitely read another novel by the author.

It was very interesting at the beginning. However the story line seems a little too simple. It might be good to have few more characters that has fuller personalities. The ending felt short and quick.

Don’t really know what to make of this book. I found it to be quite circular and after awhile it became less compelling and more ennui-inducing. I think the story stalls once they hit their college years because then they just get stuck there and repeat the same song and dance over and over again. The main characters also have this subdued, noncommittal demeanor that also grew stale after a while. I came away feeling largely indifferent about everything going on. This was a miss for me.

5/5 ☆☆☆☆☆ #andreeareviews I have finally read Normal People! I watched the show last year and loved the refreshing portrayal of a relationship that is not black and white; it’s complex, both joyful and painful, and follows the growth of the protagonists. Needless to say, I loved the book. I’ve been putting it off because this is the last Rooney novel that I haven’t read, and I am left with a massive book hungover that only another Rooney novel can fix. It’s impossible not to feel with the characters, from the awkwardness of the relationship to the impact of their personal trauma on it. It feels like Rooney reaches into your soul, turns it inside out and says: “Here, deal with this now.”. The writing is deceptively simple yet cuts straight to the heart. We met Marianne and Connell in high school. On the surface, Marianne is an ostracised, weird girl with no friends and an aloof attitude that puts people off. Connell is a popular guy, having lots of friends and being the object of interest of many girls. Connell’s mother works for Marianne’s household as a housekeeper; thus, Connell meets Marianne outside of school whenever he picks up his mom. Their brief interactions give birth first to a form of hidden friendship that turns into lust and then love as they get closer and more intimate. Their relationship is complicated in the true sense of the word and is deeply influenced by their trauma. Marianne was physically abused by her father; upon his death, the abuse continued with both her mother and brother physically and emotionally abusing her; she was ignored at home and at school, growing up without any friends and without being loved; in school, she was bullied and ostracised, becoming an apparently cold person, incapable of healthy attachment or love. She does not think she deserves to be loved, and I don’t think she knows what being loved really means. On the other hand, Connell has grown up with a single mother, never knowing her father. He felt loved and appreciated at home; however, he is an introverted, quiet person; nevertheless, this doesn’t stop him from making friends in school and being easygoing and attractive. Later on, however, in college (they both go to the same college), connecting with people becomes harder, and he feels burdened by his social background, coming from a working-class family and hanging out in a circle of rich individuals (such as Marianne). Their relationship evolves and devolves like a mesmerising dance from youth to young adulthood. They bring complexities into each other’s lives, driven by personal trauma, comfort, and a sense of having found home in that person who knows you and understands you fully. Connell, the quiet, brooding intellect, and Marianne, the sharp, unapologetic force of nature - their dynamic is a study of contrasts. Connell’s internal struggles, the perpetual feeling of not being “enough”, and Marianne’s journey from isolation to self-discovery and perhaps self-love (I am not certain she reached it by the end of the book, but it does feel like she’s on her way) - Rooney peels back the layers, revealing characters so achingly human. And this is what makes Rooney’s writing stand out for me: the incredibly relatable characters, with awkward moments, misunderstandings, and hardship, to communicate feelings and thoughts. The plot becomes, therefore, a canvas where their insecurities, desires, and mistakes point to a poignant picture of love, friendship, and the quest for identity. I said it before: Rooney is a master of dissecting the nuances of human connection. The themes of power, vulnerability, and societal expectations are woven into the narrative's fabric. The on-again-off-again nature of Marianne and Connell’s relationship isn’t just about love; it’s a mirror reflecting the intricacies of self-worth, societal pressures, and the messiness of growing up. The exploration of intimacy, both emotional and physical, is raw and unapologetic. Rooney does not shy away from the uncomfortable, and that’s where the magic happens. The power dynamics at play, the impact of societal expectations on individual choices - it’s a literary feast for readers hungry for substance. Finally, Normal People is not just a book for me; it’s a mirror reflecting the jagged edges of human relationships. Rooney doesn’t hand you answers on a silver platter; she hands you a mirror and says: “Look closely.”. In the end, you’re left with a breathtaking yet heartbreaking portrait of love and the messy, unfiltered journey toward self-acceptance, pondering long after the final page.

a good book, good quality

Do you ever consider the profound impact significant others have on your life? Decades ago, when our son was toddlerish, my husband and I took him into the country for a weekend. We rented a tiny, Eskom-free stone cottage in a dark valley. One night, with the boy asleep, we sat outside, dazzled by the night sky, and drank a bottle of wine. We’d been a couple for more than a decade by then and somehow began talking about how being together had shaped us as individuals and influenced our life decisions. It was a gentle, but remarkably illuminating discussion for both of us and about both of us. It's a conversation I regularly replay to myself to remember how lucky I am. I thought a great deal about that night as I read Sally Rooney’s novel, Normal People last week. Normal People tells the story about Marianne and Connell’s relationship, which begins when they’re at school in a small town in West Ireland and continues – on and off – for another four years while they’re at college in Dublin. It’s a tale with so many layers that, while my experience of reading it bordered on compulsive, I find it difficult to analyse – suffice to say that it’s not about the plot; it’s about the characters and their inner lives, and the writing. Rooney, who is 27-years-old, is widely feted as the next best thing, “one of the most exciting voices to emerge in an already crackerjack new generation of Irish writers”, and a “Salinger for the Snapchat generation”. I don’t dispute the praise. Her writing is extraordinarily elegant. Confident and uncluttered, it conveys an immediacy and ingenuousness that drew me in and held me from beginning to end, which came too soon. The story, I felt – shocked to discover I'd reached the final full stop – was unfinished, there were loose ends to tuck away. But, once I recovered, I realised the way it ends is part of its magic. Real relationships are forever evolving, eternally incomplete, and so it figures that a novel about relationships will be too. Normal People is told from both Marianne’s and Connell’s points of view. It reminded me how, no matter how well you think you know a person, your perceptions and understanding of what they say and mean can be skewed. The novel also shows how our identity, self-esteem and who we become as adults are bound to our upbringing – indefinitely. Marianne is from a wealthy, but unloving and dysfunctional family. Connell is from a poor, but loving family. It largely shapes who they are and how they relate to the world. The novel also examines the impact of bullying – both on victims and perpetrators. Ironically, I might not find the book easy to analyse, but I could go on forever, waffling about the many layers in Normal People. I daren’t though because then you might not feel compelled to read the book yourself, which would be a pity. A huge pity. Here’s a tiny sample of the writing to demonstrate what a humungous pity it would be: “Helen has given Connell a new way to live. It’s as if an impossibly heavy lid has been lifted off his emotional life and suddenly he can breathe fresh air. It is physically possible to type and send a message reading: I love you! It had never seemed possible before, not remotely, but in fact it’s easy. Of course if someone saw the messages he would be embarrassed, but he knows now that this is a normal kind of embarrassment, an almost protective impulse towards a particularly good part of life. He can sit down to dinner with Helen’s parents, he can accompany her to her friends’ parties, he can tolerate the smiling and the exchange of repetitive conversation. He can squeeze her hand while people ask him questions about his future. When she touches him spontaneously, applying a little pressure to his arm, or even reaching to brush a piece of lint off his collar, he feels a rush of pride, and hopes that people are watching them. To be known as her boyfriend plants him firmly in the social world, establishes him as an acceptable person, someone with a particular status, someone whose conversational silences are thoughtful rather than socially awkward." I’m not sure I feel changed after reading Normal People, but I do feel upgraded. And reminded about how life is a series of relationships, and how a few of them help shape who we are and how we live our lives. And that thinking about that and acknowledging those who positively influence us is important. And yes, Sally Rooney has a fan in me. My current read is her first novel, Conversations with Friends.

In CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS, Irish writer Sally Rooney embraces the moniker “millennial writer” by commanding the consequential riptides of the personal computer age for 20-somethings, yet not depending on it as a crutch or gimmick. She’s spot-on at mixing the clean and the messy, visually appealing characters with their urbane and often insouciant lifestyles, but never misses the humanity and poignancy that gives the story its heart. In her new novel, NORMAL PEOPLE, Rooney is like the anti-zeitgeist zeitgeist writer, or the anti-hip hip writer. I say that because the novel has a classical sensibility—third person pov, a love story of the wealthy, self-contained girl with the awkward, underprivileged boy, and the recall of manners novels of another era. But the author also textures it with a contemporary setting and modern angst. The years of post-crash Ireland, a wry tone, tacit gender equality that quivers with intimate power shifts. The lovers, Marianne and Connell, start their love story in high school, and are at cross-purposes, which is the main suspense and action that provides tension. Connell’s mother, a warm and loving woman, cleans houses for Marianne’s family (both are single mothers). Marianne’s brother is abusive and her mother dismisses her entirely. Although Marianne is from the elite family, this is a small town in Sligo Co. where her offbeat style is off-putting to her peers. Connell is a winning athlete and popular, and they begin their on-again, off-again romance in secretive fashion. Time passes with titles of Five Months Later, Three Months Later, or even a few days later, moving forward from 2011 to 2015, from high school on to college at Trinity Dublin. As the narration alternates between the pair, the background story fleshes out. The reader is in suspense as each time period begins, not knowing the status changes of their relationship until you are teased into it. The novel itself is largely interior, and the raw emotional and psychological energy is the story’s propulsive force. Yet, Rooney’s precise language and stripped down descriptions of place are yet amplified by the physicality of her prose. “At times he has the sensation that he and Marianne are like figure-skaters, improvising their discussions so adeptly and in such perfect synchronization that it surprises them both.” And the exposed, rough and yet tender description of the electricity between them is ongoing: “She was attuned to the presence of his body in a microscopic way, as if the ordinary motion of his breathing was powerful enough to make her ill.” Their relationship is often quiet, even when turbulent, a gale force between the two of them and a mystique to others. They confide in almost no one but themselves, even when they are off-again. A wall separates them, but when they penetrate it, there’s a shattering, like glass. But don’t expect a tidy ending—if you read CONVERSATION WITH FRIENDS, you know it isn’t Rooney’s way. She’s more of a yin yang writer, with an ending that is somewhere in the middle of time and things and life. “From a young age her life has been abnormal, she knows that. But so much is covered over in time now, the way leaves fall and cover a piece of earth, and eventually mingle with the soil. Things that happened to her then are buried in the earth of her body.”

3.5 stars. It was really good honestly! But also really repetitive, and I didn’t feel any resolution/character development. Even so, the writing was really enjoyable