Normal People

Normal People

By Sally Rooney

Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.

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 at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And 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.

There was such an emphasis on "good" versus "bad" - whether or not Marianne or Connell were "nice".  I understand some of that, to a degree, since it's something I struggle with as well - do my interactions with this person make me nicer, how can I be nicer to people - but there was such a focus on it, it was hard to tell if it was coming from the author or the characters.   There's a point at the end where Marianne thinks about how Connell's life has been shaped by the first fateful decision to sleep together - where he went to school, how he dates people, his attitude - and marvels at the impact they have had on each other.  That's the beauty of Normal People, to narrow in on that piece of astonishing truth. 

One thing that did drive me crazy though: the book is basically shorter sections, generally taking place weeks or months apart, and switching viewpoints between Marianne and Connell.  We'd end one, and then pick up the next, usually halfway through a scene, and then the narrator would flashback at some point to what happened since the last section.  For example, Marianne and Connell would sleep together, and then the next section be them breaking up, and we'd have to flashback to see what happened in the interim.  It's fine to do it, but it felt way overused and got pretty stale by the end. I'd be like, ho hum, here we go again, waiting to see how things got fucked up this time.    

For all that I've been complaining about these contemporary romances involving people jumping into long term commitment, Normal People sure was the antidote to that! The push and pull of the relationship went on for years.  I think though, it was a good pace - nothing felt out of character or surprising, although, I am going to complain that once again, we miss out of some of the most important character development by skipping through long swathes of time towards the end of the book - in this case, both Connell's anxiety/depression treatment, and Marianne's masochistic sex habits.  The ending is optimistic and hopeful, with Marianne basically telling Connell that they'll come together and you do believe her (at least, I did) but it's built on this idea that both Connell and Marianne have matured and know themselves well enough to avoid their earlier pitfalls, and honestly, I'm not sure that foundation is supported enough since we've effectively glossed over both of their "recoveries".  

It's a nice enough book, not going to become a favorite of mine, but well-written.  Now that some time has passed since I finished it, I think my main feeling of the book looking back is "wistful" although that's not something I necessarily thought of while I was in the midst of reading it.  I ended up taking some time off reading "serious" fiction for awhile after this one, I felt like I just needed more lightweight books to lift my serotonin, although, as always, it's the thought provoking and difficult books that inspire me to read more.  Normal People does a good job of narrowing in on a specific phase of some people's lives - let's call it the "college years" - where each relationship becomes a building block of your adulthood and decisions feel like they echo down the rest of your life, and while all this is going on, you make stupid decisions because communication is a learned skill and most people can't do it very well when they're in their early 20s.  A lot of the first half of the book is like that - hurt feelings and missteps because one of them assumes the other's intent or some such, and that felt realistic for the most part, but I can also see where readers might lose patience with characters whose heads are basically up their own butts pretty often.  Perhaps that's why we feel optimistic at the end of the book even though (as I said above) I don't think Rooney covers enough of the critical turning point for readers to believe in the ability of Connell and Marianne to handle a relationship well: it's because we have been there ourselves, and we have done it successfully.