Normal People
Ratings831
Average rating3.6
“Most people go through their whole lives, Marianne thought, without ever really feeling that close with anyone.”
Despite all the good things I have heard about this, I wasn't expecting to love this book as much as I did.
I can't put into words how real this felt. The characters weren't perfect, they were flawed and made mistakes. They were real. I absolutely loved reading the changes in the characters and how life and experienced shaped them differently. This was like reading a page out of one of my old diaries.
This was such wonderful writing and story-telling. I feel like this book and the characters will be roaming around in my head for a long time to come.
“I'm not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.”
This was the first book of Sally Rooney's that I had read and I can wholeheartedly say that it will most definitely not be the last.
i loved this a lot. found out about this from the miniseries (with daisy edgar jones and paul mescal) and read it on a 6h travel day to texas. it's not a super long read so great if you're looking for something easy to pick up
i understand why this doesn't jive with a lot of people since this is pretty much the poster child of "main characters who have a minor misunderstanding who don't communicate with one another". i've also seen criticisms around some decisions that the characters make (both marianne and connell) and how the ending is pretty open ended which could be felt as being kind of inconclusive; both valid criticisms in my opinion
but nonetheless this touched a nerve for me in a really similar way that the film past lives did. it's a really raw slice of life sort of story so there are parts and situations that i can really connect to that pull me in, but there are also cases where characters do things that i don't understand (c'est la vie i guess 🤷♀️). will-they-won't-they tropes are also some of my guilty pleasures so it makes sense to me why i enjoyed this book so much
you're gonna love this if you love stories where you take more of a bystander approach and watch characters live their lives and do the things that they do but i can see why this would fall flat if you find the negatives of the characters to be annoying
I truly enjoyed Rooney's writing style, I don't know why, it just grabbed me from the first sentences. I will pick up her other works for sure. I also listened to it partly on audio so even when I read it could still hear the Irish accent in my head which only made the experience better.
I took my time with it because there was only so much of those characters I could take on in consistent dose. There were pretty messed up and suffered for it while not doing anything about it. I hate seeing people suffering when their lives could be a little better if they would just tackle their demons. I see a lot of people around me setting themselves on destructive paths just because they're trying to runaway from their feelings and traumas. Life can be so hard even when you're working your way through all of that anyways let alone when you're just making it worse. Watching Marianne and Connel's relationship develop was an uncomfortable experience yet I couldn't break away.
i thought it was nice and interesting but mostly funny to think about and at some points tedious. one of my brothers is named Conal so i was like “hehe” until the book got horny :/ definitely did not expect the sexual violence and it felt really bad to think about and i suppose i still don't feel so well a month out from reading it
“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.”
Conell wished he knew how other people conducted their private lives, so that he could copy from example
Marianne wonders what it would be like to belong here, to walk down the street greeting people amd smiling. To feel that life was happening here, in this place, and not somewhere else far away
Who were you? She thinks, now that theres no one left to answer the question.
“It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”
Connell is silent again. He leans down and kisses her on the forehead. I would never hurt you, okay? he says. Never. She nods and says nothing. You make me really happy, he says. His hand moves over her hair and he adds: I love you. I'm not just saying that, I really do. Her eyes fill up with tears again and she closes them. Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she's aware of this now, while it's happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed, she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.
Did not like the jumpy writing style. It made it so it was impossible to connect/relate to the characters
This is definitely something I need to collect my thoughts on.
But to grow such an attachment to these characters. To actually feel them as real. It's just so personal and honestly wished that the final chapter just had a few more pages.
This is actually a 4.5 btw.
Wanted to reread this one because i thought i might be able to appreciate it more since i am a full grown up now and all but my opinion remains unchanged. I still didn't like reading about characters whose main traits are self-sabotaging behaviours, shrugging every three sentences, and saying “I don't know” 24*7. None of the side chracters were fleshed out at all. just archetypes. three stars are for Rooney's style of writing. Zero stars for creating a relationship where there is miscommunication just for the sake of drama.
While I liked the book, I didn't enjoy the central relationship. I was so happy with that ambiguous end. I thought: This is a healthy move, Marianne; you absolutely did the right thing.
Rooney does a good job of highlighting the harm we do to ourselves, and other people when we depend on others for validation and acceptance. So I think it is so interesting that even in the final version of their relationship, Marianne seems so dependent on Connell. There's a particular passage I can't get out of my head:
She was laughing then, and her face was red. She was in his power, he had chosen to redeem her, she was redeemed. It was so unlike him to behave that way in public that he must have been doing it on purpose, to please her. How strange to feel herself so completely under the control of another person, but also how ordinary. No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not. She knows he loves her, she doesn't wonder about that anymore.
Rooney critiques a need for social acceptance to such a large degree in this novel, that it seems an odd choice to have Marianne and Connell this dependent on each other. Even in the end, they haven't necessarily found a middle ground. In this particular passage it reads (to me anyway), that Marianne is accepting that she and Connel are co-dependent and that is ok. I think that an over-reliance on social acceptance and an overreliance on one person, are both perversions of what could otherwise be healthy relationships between ourselves and the people around us. So it is an interesting choice Rooney makes to have Marianne ‘accept' her codependent relationship, getting to the end of her book. To me, it reads as an indication that Marianne and Connell have not yet managed to be independent while maintaining healthy relationships. There's an all or nothing quality to their relationship that is present even at the end, which is why I think the book absolutely had to end the way it did.
In the book, we got to see Connell get therapy for his anxiety and depression, but we never got to see Marianne work through her own trauma and abuse. I think this may in part contribute to the state of their relationship. Considering Connell himself had contributed to her feelings of unworthiness, I couldn't believe in the health of their connection. Even in the last chapter. So I was overjoyed when the book ended with their separation. I feel perhaps they could reconnect later when they are healthier more mature versions of themselves and have a better relationship. For now, I was happy that this iteration of their relationship was dying.
The book made me feel many things, it is rare that I inhabit characters as fully as I inhabited Connell and Marianne. In fact, I'm absolutely certain that my strong feelings about this book have made this review an incoherent mess but
Oh! A love story, ok.
Three months later: ok, this Connell guy seems to be a fuckboy.
Two months later: ok, Connell is an idiot.
Six weeks later: Connell is still an idiot
One year later: Connell? What a moron.
Two weeks later: oh, Marianne is pretty f***ed up too.
Twelve days later: Connell is still pretty dumb for someone who is supposed to be a genius. Marianne is still a mess.
...
Four years later: Connell is still a stupid man and Marianne is still a mess, but a little better. All in all, they are indeed pretty normal people.
I don't know how to rate this. It's a story about weird people who make weird choices and everyone ends up sad and hurt. But I liked it??? Idk. Might be 3.5 for me but I'm rounding up.
A compulsive and brutally nihalistic romance novel. This is my first Sally Rooney and not at all what I expected, but it's very easy to see why she has become so highly regarded. She writes her characters with such tenderness and empathy, in spite of their confounding decisions and cycles of self alienation. At the same time they possess an acute, almost meticulous physical awareness that nevertheless only makes their pain more acute.
This book is predominantly about an inability to connect to others, of superficial interactions insufficiently standing in for a deeper connection the two protagonists crave. The conclusions they arrive at are frustrating, but so deeply articulated that they make a sort of sense. Nobody is capable of unpacking their adolescent (and ongoing) trauma because it requires a vulnerability that frankly terrifies them. So they dissociate, attempt to mirror each other, cling to the closest approximation of happiness they can find. It is unrelentingly bleak and I admire the willingness to refuse an easy resolution.
The degree to which this articulates an actual worldview of impossible codependency is murkier for me, with a lot of baggage of outdated psychology being inserted as an inherent cause of the isolation everyone feels (rather than, say, the class disparity that is crudely gestured at but far outside the novel's interests). I cannot begrudge it too much as it is well in line with characters who themselves have very little awareness of the reasons they are so unhappy, but I am skeptical about the ways that viewpoint inevitably gets expanded to be some sort of social truth.
Mostly I am surprised by the book's coldness. I devoured it in a few days and came away feeling profoundly empty. I do mean this as a compliment of sorts.
FR/EN Review
Initially, I awarded Sally Rooney's “Normal People” three stars, but after delaying my review and finding myself unable to recall anything substantial about the book two weeks later, I downgraded it to two stars. While it may have been a pleasant enough read in the moment, it clearly failed to leave a lasting impression.
“Normal People” may have its merits for some readers, but for me, it failed to fulfill its potential as a memorable and impactful piece of literature.
Initialement, j'avais attribué trois étoiles à “Normal People” de Sally Rooney, mais après avoir retardé ma critique et ne me rappeler rien de substantiel sur le livre deux semaines plus tard, je l'ai réduit à deux étoiles. Bien que cela ait peut-être été une lecture agréable sur le moment, il est clair qu'elle n'a pas réussi à laisser une impression durable.
“Normal People” peut avoir ses mérites pour certains lecteurs, mais pour moi, il n'a pas réussi à réaliser son potentiel en tant qu'œuvre littéraire mémorable et marquante.
I'm very torn over the rating of this book. It reads very simply and nothing interesting really happens, but it is a beautiful character study of two complex people, and an even more complex relationship. It is clear that Rooney is a gifted writer- often, a simple turn of phrase made me catch my breath. So, it's a 4.5 star rating for now, but we will see how long these characters stay with me, and it may be bumped to a 5.
Sparse in its prose, unrelenting in its personal depth. No quotation marks was initially frustrating but quickly lent itself to a smooth reading process. Years pass as each chapter announces a shift in weeks and months, and readers are carried through the thoughts of our two leads and many of the romance-related events in their lives.
I found myself deeply moved by passages, with lines and moments touching my own personal experiences, even though a large portion of the novel remains faded and toneless. The settings, background people and even the way the characters themselves look aren't Rooney's concern. Instead, she covers facets of being in a deep relationship - social signals, the intermingling and sometimes indistinguishableness between submission and vulnerability, growth, change, worthiness, darkness, care, obliviousness and confusion.
I was taken aback by the starkness in the depiction of more adult subjects, but it was fitting for the book's visually unvaried language. The inner dialogue reveals potent ties to mental health from broken homes and single mothers, depression, anxiety, and self-worth. This is all intermingled with discussions on class, 2010s youth social media and typical European university student experiences such as dinners, parties and exchanges.
A personally profound read and one where I became rapidly attached to these two characters circling each other throughout their changing adolescent lives.
So uncomfortable, I could not read for more than thirty minutes at a time: I'd get so tense I'd have to stand up, pace, vent nervous energy. Also: so good, I'd always sit right back and continue reading.
It's tragic that life doesn't come with an instruction manual (would we read it if we had one?). Normal People is a compressed arc of two peoples' discovery of their Selves, of how to become human beings in a world that often makes it so hard. Rooney packs a lot of material into four years: social dynamics, family abuse, somewhat more sociopathy than (I hope) most of us encounter in a lifetime, shame, forgiveness, communication, self-hatred, privilege, acceptance, and growth. The principal characters are decent people, intelligent and with good moral sense; also flawed, being shitty to others or to themselves at times, with no training in or experience with real human communication; suffering and causing pain to others because of it. Social expectations play a huge role throughout: our need for acceptance and the convoluted ways we torture ourselves and others to gain it, how crippling our social framework can be for developing a fulfilling life. How society's limited definitions (“riding”, “bf/gf”, “friends”) completely misses the infinite variety of loving relationships we can have between two or more people. How, if we're very very lucky, we can meet and recognize and attach to the right kinds of people, ones who make us better.
I seem to have a thing for tying current life events to my book readings. In this case, I read Normal People in the context of an email exchange with a dear friend in which we spoke of intimate friendship and radical conversation: of safe communication despite discomfort, of truly listening, of commitment and perseverance despite and throughout miscommunications. So that was my frame of mind while reading the book, and while that added to the poignancy of each communication misstep, and my sadness that we don't learn earlier how to listen, what I came away with was intense admiration for Rooney: she's not even thirty and already has an exquisite sense of and empathy for the human mind. Maybe her next book will be that life how-to guide that future youngsters will read.
I felt this book addressed some of the problems I had with Conversations With Friends; some of what mas missing from the latter, was present here, namely addressing gender power dynamics and adding a contrasting narrative voice.
Rooney somehow manages to communicate a very specific type of internal female voice that I haven't seen brought to life so vividly before.
I do feel like the only aspect of her writing that sits uncomfortably with me is that she writes as someone who hasn't moved through or transcended these experiences yet; she's still in them. The perspective is valuable and utterly absorbing, but I wanted the characters to grow beyond their experiences in a more profound way.
One niggle that persisted on from Conversations with Friends, is just an overwhelming vibe of middle class whiteness and fake-wokeness (the handling of class issues is kind of heavy-handed). There doesn't seem to be an authorial awareness of this either, nor the characters' inability to strive for anything other than a vaguely conservative BoBo mediocrity.