normal people by sally rooney
a love letter to tortured lovers and people just trying their best
“I'm not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.”
- Normal People
Deciding to read this book was a nerve-wracking experience.
It felt like everyone had read and loved “Normal People”, and that Sally Rooney had cemented herself as their most beloved literary author of the century. Of course I was desperate to fall in love with this book as much as everyone else, but I was worried that it had been over-hyped on social media. Did everyone love this book because they thought they had to? Or did “Normal People” have something to say that so eloquently touched many reader’s hearts and souls?
Now that I’ve closed the final page and spent some time thinking about my reading experience, I can say that I fully understand the hype. One-hundred percent. “Normal People” won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, that’s for sure, but for some it will powerfully resonate with them. Just as it did with me.
“Normal People” intimately focuses on the pivotal moments of Marianne and Connell’s relationship as they navigate high school in a small town and university in Dublin as they move from adolescence into adulthood. The book jumps from three weeks to six months to sometimes even five minutes, providing us with the most emotionally charged and impactful moments of their relationship. The story begins with Marianne as a rich and privileged teenager who is mostly misunderstood and bullied by the majority of her peers. Connell, on the other hand, is the son of a working-class single mother, is also a great athlete and he’s immensely popular at school. Their paths cross because Connell’s mother is Marianne’s family’s housekeeper, and one day when Connell picks up his mother after work they begin connecting in a way they can’t with any of their peers or families. However, this remains a secret — something only the two of them engage in away from everybody else in their lives.
As the story moves from high school into their university years, their social situations change multiple times throughout the story. For example, Marianne finds popularity and understanding from her peers, instilling a newfound confidence that was foreign to her back home. She even dates a few other men. Meanwhile, Connell feels out of his depth, regrets his decision to keep Marianne secret, and struggles to create friendships like the ones he had growing up. Yet despite their ongoing differences and the changes happening in their respective lives, Marianne and Connell continue to be in each other’s orbit, always remaining important to one another even if they aren’t always ‘together’. There’s a lot of yearning and often a lot of unresolved feelings.
But the interesting thing about “Normal People” is that this isn’t a love story.
I know you’ve probably seen it advertised as such, but “Normal People” is much deeper and much more complex to be defined as a typical love story. This is a story about two people whose relationship constantly shifts due to the social pressures, mental health struggles and personal conflicts each of them experience. Sometimes they’re dating, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re speaking, sometimes it’s radio silence. Sometimes they are tender with each other, sometimes they are callous and hurt each other. (It gives a very ‘tortured lovers’ feel.) But their relationship, no matter its status, is always influencing them as individuals — for better or for worse. Marianne and Connell are a beautiful, and perhaps painful, reminder that we don’t exist on this planet alone. We are capable of altering the course of anyone’s life, consciously or not.
By themselves, Marianne and Connell are interesting, complex characters. They have strengths and weaknesses, desires and hardships. They feel immensely real and human. I loved reading about Marianne’s growth from the misunderstood outsider to someone who is more confident, who wants to explore her desires, and can form her own relationships/friendships with other people — especially considering the troubles she was experiencing at home. She doesn’t always make the best decisions, but show me somebody in their late teens and early twenties who has. And I especially loved reading about Connell’s acceptance of his mental health struggles and his burning desire to better himself. The way his depression is described is so visceral. And the scene where he talks to a therapist is one of my favourites. I swear a tear rolled down my cheek.
Yet it’s not surprising that it’s when Marianne and Connell are together where the magic really happens. Their connection is electric and it’s only when they are together, alone and way from anyone else, that they feel the most comfortable to express their truest, rawest selves.
But like I said before, Marianne and Connell aren’t a love story. I’ll say that again, for the third time. Marianne and Connell aren’t a love story. Their relationship is ripe with misunderstandings (perhaps to the point where it becomes infuriating if you’re not a fan of that trope) and it’s so painfully insular at times. I guess since their relationship begins as a secret, integrating into the real world becomes more difficult. They’ve always co-existed in a world where they have shut everybody out. A world they created where their social and economic differences can’t penetrate. Their survival as a couple — either secretly or out in the light of day — depends entirely on their isolation. And while it may be easy to read “Normal People” and romanticise this kind of relationship, I personally found it suffocating at times and immensely claustrophobic at others.
I know that there is some criticism for the way Sally Rooney chose to write the side characters, but I think it was a great writing choice for this particular book as it further centralised Marianne and Connell. Please hear me out. The side characters were all somewhat regulated to easily identifiable stereotypes, such as “the mean girl”, “the abusive family member”, “the strong-willed single mother”, “the insufferable/pretentious boyfriend”, “the peppy girlfriend”, etc. But for me, the lack of depth to the side characters only added to the claustrophobic feel of Marianne and Connell’s relationship. It was like neither of them knew the other people in their lives as deeply and as intimately as they knew each other. It created the feeling that their friends and families weren’t as important as the connection both of them felt.
Although the book focuses on Marianne and Connell’s complex relationship the most, it’s through their love and vulnerability and challenges that Sally Rooney explores much deeper themes and heavier topics. For example, the influence of social and economic class, the intricacies of love, power dynamics, identity and insecurity, acceptable and unacceptable forms of desire, mental health and coping mechanisms, and familial abuse, are all touched upon with deliberate care and compassion. Like I said, this book isn’t a love story, it contains multitudes — “Normal People” is actually a study into the complexities of people and relationships, and the deep, transformative impacts we can have on each other.
So, tell me, have I convinced you to pick up “Normal People” yet? If you love the sound of this book, but are still worried about the lack of quotation marks, I understand.
Before I started reading “Normal People” I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to get past this stylistic choice. It felt so immensely wrong to not have quotation marks, like it went against everything I’d ever learned about writing dialogue and grammar. (Did anybody else feel this way going in?) But the deeper I got into the book, I was surprised how I ended up forgetting about it and just enjoyed Sally Rooney’s precise yet beautifully poetic prose. Thinking back, it actually made me read more intentionally too and I felt like I came to deeply understand and know the story in a more intimate way because of that.
“Normal People” is an exceptionally well-written literary novel that never shies away from the real complexities of what it means to be human and how the relationships we have with each other can intimately shape our lives.
I think that Marianne and Connell, so devastating and so human and so rich with emotion, will remain with me always. Not just as tortured lovers, but also as normal people who are trying their best to navigate the world around them. And I hope that someday, somehow, they can discover a way to turn their relationship into a real and ever-lasting love story. I just know their story isn’t over yet.
Links:
‘I’m Not So Interested in Feelings People Go Through on Their Own’: An Interview with Sally Rooney
Sally Rooney Gets Real ‘Normal People’, Her New Novel — and Finding Literary Stardom
Favourite Quotes:
“Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.”
“Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.”
“Most people go through their whole lives, without ever really feeling that close with anyone.”
“It's funny the decisions you make because you like someone, he says, and then your whole life is different. I think we're at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions.”
“Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.”
“It feels powerful to him to put an experience down in words, like he's trapping it in a jar and it can never fully leave him.”
Thank you so much for reading my love letter to “Normal People”. I know that so many of you love and cherish this literary novel and Sally Rooney as an author, so I hope you enjoyed this piece.
I’m now determined to find a copy of “Conversations with Friends” soon because I want to read more of her work. If you’ve read that one or any of her other novels, did you enjoy them as much as “Normal People”? Perhaps even more? I’d love to know in the comments.
Until next time,
- Madeline
Loved reading this! I think it's just an honest love story. I think our standards for love stories are very high and unrealistic. I believe it's the rawness and realistic nature of this story that make it alluring.
Loved reading your thoughts on Normal People as someone who has just finished watching the show and reading the book. After hating Conversations with Friends (yes, hating, and there’s consensus that this is not her best work nor the best adaptation either, so proceed at your own risk) I had no intention to approach anything by Sally Rooney again, but here I am 😂 You’ve captured here the essence of the characters and their complicated (perhaps sometimes unnecessarily so) relationship with each other. I found watching the adaptation very useful in this regard as it helped me picture the characters in the novel as fully-rounded people as on the page they can come across as simply emotionally immature when there are many more layers to them.