Introduction

“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.”

At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school soccer team while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her housekeeping job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers – one they are determined to conceal.

A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

My Thoughts

We’re taking a break from our usual fantasy fiction for something a little more realistic. Normal People is the first book that I’ve devoured so quickly in a WHILE. I read Conversations with Friends last year for class and I really enjoyed it, so I had high hopes for this book. Conversations with Friends was a bit of a rough journey because I often had to participate in classroom discussions on the relationships in that book and there were a lot of opinons.

Normal people, however, was a much better experience! It didn’t disappoint. I love how Rooney’s characters are always just….messy – that’s truly the easiest way to describe them. I found myself asking “why are y’all like this?” very often while reading the book, but that’s just part of the fun.

If this was just a simple book about people being attracted to each other then I probably would’ve given it just 4 stars but the casual discussion of mental health and how that changed over time was really the cherry on top for me.

I understand that there are a lot of criticisms of Rooney and her writing so I would like to start by saying that I fully see the flaws in the novel. Despite these flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Is it comparable to the few novels I’ve read this past year with a similar rating? Not by a long shot (maybe one of The 100 books), but ratings are subjective and if you do not agree with mine, that’s okay. But let me tell you why I enjoyed it:

This is such an easy read and SO SHORT. The dialogue makes it so easy to get through and easy to understand these characters. Marianne was a bit much for me to wrap my head around at first but I grew to her very quickly – not every character needs to be put together and wrapped in a pretty bow, some characters just have to be messy.

Speaking of characters, they’re the main reason why I enjoyed this book. I loved Connell and Marianne dynamic, even when it was frustrating at best. I like that, through these two characters, Rooney kind of shows how you can be meant for each other and go your separate ways (or even how you can be horrible for each other and still gravitate towards the other, depending on how you want to read the book).

I really appreciated this break from fantasy books, given how my last read went, and I’m even happier that this book kept me from a reading slump. On to the next!

Rating

Overall, I give the book 5 stars. I stayed up for two nights straight reading in the dark with my booklight because I couldn’t get enough of this book. These makes two great books from Rooney, maybe I’ve got to add another to my reading list soon.