Over the last year or so, I have actively been trying to read new authors and pick up a few best-seller books that seem to be universally recommended. Sally Rooney’s Normal People was one such novel that everyone—and I mean everyone—seemed to rank at the top of the must-read lists.
Naturally, I was sceptical about such unanimous praise for a romance book, because I often associate it with a very sanitary or cliché story. Nonetheless, I bought a used copy and made a note to read it… then finally picked it up and tore through it in mere days.
Now having read it, I can see why Normal People was such a hot item in the literary world, and I fully back the idea that it should be one of the most celebrated novels of the 2010s. It has also made me feel a little sheepish about constantly ignoring other popular works that seem to be getting a lot of praise—except Colleen Hoover, her writing seems dreadful at best. Anyway, back to Rooney’s novel.
The premise and surface-level story of this novel are deceptively generic. At its core, Normal People is a straightforward romance story about two secondary school friends from Carricklea, a fictional town located in County Sligo, Ireland. It follows them both separately and as an occasional unspoken couple from their final school year up to their latter years at Trinity College, Dublin, observing how they reject and magnetise towards one another time and time again.
I enjoyed the fixation on such a developmental stage in the characters’ lives (secondary school and university) because it allows for a lot of stupid things to feel much more natural. Many of the characters’ rash or selfish actions are spurred on by the naivety of youth and the overpowering hormonal influences of young adults, making conflict and drama in Rooney’s novel feel relatively natural and believable.
The whole novel toys with the running theme of what it means to be a ‘normal person’, including the ability to fit in and feel at ease with one’s self. Through her novel and characters, Rooney questions if it is normal to feel powerless towards yourself, your desires, and the greater social sphere that surrounds everything you do.
I like that it never really lands on a concrete answer regarding this, because I think we all know normalcy is a paradox of sometimes being in control of some elements of our lives and losing control of other parts. People who seem normal are often not.
You may be able to sense a little floundering on my part, and that’s because I want to avoid spoiling much of the romance and dynamic between our main characters, Connell and Marianne. But, still, I have to discuss more of the story to make this a worthwhile review.
Across the novel and their maturing lives, the pair are simultaneously beneficial and toxic to one another. It is a perfect representation of barely functioning attraction that seems to complete and destroy both parties; neither feels totally secure, but there also seems to be no true force driving them apart. It blurs the line between love and lust, and their relationship could probably best be surmised as a situationship for most of the novel.
In truth, Rooney’s portrayal is shockingly, almost sickeningly, realistic in how push-and-pull Connell and Marianne’s relationship is. But I think that also comes down to how well both characters are fleshed out and nuanced in their own ways.
Connell and Marianne are both well-rounded and easy to sympathise/empathise with, but also easy to hate at certain points in the story. I think readers can like one or the other, or enjoy both, or even hate both—but I think the most entertaining part as a reader is how your opinion of both characters can be in flux as the story progresses.
In brief, young Connell is a self-centred teen from a poor and fatherless household, making his successes much more powerful and his struggles much more pitiable. Young Marianne is from a rich household, but spent her whole life with a hostile family that only recently lost the father figure to death. Because of her privileges, but also complete lack of emotional security, Marianne becomes a bit harder to analyse and empathise with than Connell.
In secondary school, Connell is social and popular, whereas Marianne is not; it seems like the classic school loser and local hottie love story, or working-class Romeo and financially loaded Juliet. But, I assure you, it is not that.
Rooney plays with this foundation (their upbringing and social life) as the two characters continuously age, part, and reunite into their twenties.
She develops the questionable Connell into a much more sympathetic and tragic case, which makes it a lot easier to pity him, and also allows readers to look back on his youth differently upon realising how intelligent and complex he is. Yet, much of Connell’s pain is down to his own mistakes; he runs away, he never asks the right things, he becomes too absorbed in certain matters, but he is also too mature at times. He is a character cursed to fumble, and, depending on the reader, this can make him really relatable or rather detestable.
Marianne, by contrast, always remains fairly tragic, but her ability to grasp onto adulthood much better than Connell—as well as enjoying the backing of her privileged financial situation—makes her a sort of unofficial antagonist at certain points. Yet, thanks to Connell’s own fumblings and moments of selfishness, readers know she is no worse or arrogant than he is. Therefore, any anger readers feel towards Marianne is in spite of the understanding that she is just doing what Connell once did, being self-centred and self-interested, whilst being (debatably) more mature than him.
I enjoy this layering and constant building upon historical context, not only in terms of the characters’ relationship with one another, but also how they develop as individuals since their secondary school years. Connell and Marianne often swap in how much power they have over one another—sometimes it’s 50/50, sometimes it’s almost all in one character’s control, and occasionally they don’t seem interested in each other.
Aside from the allure of its flesh-out and complex characters, the story is delivered and paced very well. I was particularly fond of Rooney’s utilisation of large time skips between chapters, usually at least a few months, before using the chapter’s contents fill in, or at least infer, what it skipped retroactively.
This approach is beneficial to sustaining tension and working effectively to add context to an ongoing scene. It keeps you invested through noticing a change in the characters’ lives, or an absence/introduction of a character, and then propels you to figure out what happened and why such a change occurred. For example, Connell and Marianne may be very lovey in one chapter, but the next chapter skips months ahead and suddenly Connell and Marianne aren’t interacting at all. You desire to know why this change occurred in the 50–100 days the chapter glossed over.
This approach to storytelling also enriches Normal People in a thematic sense. Nothing in the story feels certain; it is laden with insecurity and a sense of fragility. The effect this has on the reader mirrors Connell and Marianne’s own relationship to, and with, each other—there is no certainty of what lies ahead, or how for long the good will last.
Additionally, there are a lot of sexual themes within Normal People, something Rooney seems to be fond of. Typically, this would turn me off from a story, but I found the author’s employment of how hypocritically meaningful, yet meaningless, sex is to disturb the reader (and the insecure Connell) pretty unique.
I’ve never had a novel make me feel like sex is such a big deal to people on an emotional level, whilst also giving me a clear indication that sex is just sex, simply two people bumping uglies for the sake of pleasure.
It is such a twisted feeling that toys with characters’ egos and sense of security, which makes for a really gripping story on our end. It also inclines us to sprinkle in our own personal politics about sex and love when reading, which really lures us into becoming invested in the relationship and thoughts of both primary characters.
When Connell or Marianne have a sexual liking, or even an emotional interest, in another character, do we readers feel okay with that? I’m sure everyone would answer a little bit differently and take reference from their own lives and what they know about relationships, love, and sex. Rooney uses a reader’s desire to impart their own opinions in a very clever way, and it’s only something I realised I was doing after I put the novel down. Genius stuff.
As for why this near-masterpiece only has four and a half stars, it comes down to some rather Hollywood-esque elements, the clichés that Rooney couldn’t avoid occasionally entwining in her story.
When I say ‘Hollywood-esque’, think of a generic romance film, where there are some rather one-note characters designed to be hated. Normal People has such characters for both sides of the coin: a prissy girl who seems rather interested in Connell during secondary school and hates Marianne because she’s an outcast, and a very egotistical short guy that effectively romantically and sexually cuckolds Connell later in the story.
Unlike the two central characters, many of the side characters just lacked development. Their presence and the ripples they cause within the story are not the issue, it is their designed-to-be-hated personalities and mentalities. Of course, it did not ruin the novel, but it was the one element I felt Rooney failed to develop in a way that made readers think anything but ‘wow, this character is a prick’.
The only side character that felt rather fleshed-out and not designed to be hated was Helen, a woman Connell gets with during a long lull between he and Marianne. She was well-developed and almost perfect for Connell, but had enough flaws to make her not appear saintly.
The ending of their relationship was one that successfully conflicts the reader: Connell was unappreciative of this near-perfect woman because of his feelings for Marianne and his depression, but Helen dumped him because of how broken and self-absorbed he was, perhaps because of her undertones of jealousy and her own (occasionally obvious) egotism. Both are flawed, but neither seem wholly justified, yet each reader will think differently and side differently with Helen or Connell.
Helen was an example that proved to me that Rooney could write complex and interesting side character, which only made me more disappointed with the others that seemed much flatter and cliché by comparison.
With that minor issue aside, I can conclude with saying I am glad I finally gave this novel a chance. From start to finish, Normal People is an interesting, down to earth, and sporadically gut-wrenching love and coming of age story. Pain and uncomfortable, awkward emotions are something that seems to have gone missing from mainstream fiction as of late, with all the current appeal of lovey-dovey novels that are designed to be a touching, cosy read and little more.
I think Rooney’s bleak portrayal of love is touching and terrifying in its accuracy. And, despite my dislike of them, the faint utilisation of clichés in Normal People sometimes works to its benefit, rather than dragging the story in a more generic, stereotypical push and pull love story. These predictable, fairly one-note side characters (not Helen) do manage to stir up drama and conflict, so they at least do something.
Overall, Normal People is a great depiction of honest, questionable, but affable characters that struggle to love and accept who they are at the same time, making it rife with sickening regret and tepid optimism throughout each chapter. You, much like Connell and Marianne, never know quite how to feel about what is currently going on between the pair, and that is what pushes you to finish the book.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think almost anyone who reads it will too. I truly cannot recommend it enough!
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