Normal People
by Sally Rooney
Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small Irish town but move in completely different worlds. From secondary school into college and beyond, they are drawn to each other and keep finding ways to miss each other anyway — not through dramatic events, but through small failures of honesty.
“He had sincerely wanted to be a good person. But wanting it was not enough.”
What It Actually Felt Like
I didn’t expect to feel this much reading this book. Connell and Marianne are two people who clearly want each other and keep getting in their own way, not because of grand drama but because of small moments of not being brave enough to say the thing. It’s mundane and devastating in equal measure.
Rooney writes the texture of young intimacy with a precision that is uncomfortably recognizable. There’s no real plot in the traditional sense. The book is more of an emotional autopsy. And somehow that’s exactly what it needed to be.
The Honest Part
No quotation marks in the dialogue takes some getting used to. And Connell is the kind of frustrating that might make you want to put the book down. That frustration is kind of the point though.
Who This Is For
Anyone who has been in a relationship that felt inevitable and impossible at the same time. Also fans of Sunburn because emotionally these two books are neighbors.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Just feelings. A lot of them.
Tags literary fiction, romance, Irish lit, mood: emotionally heavy
