Normal People: Book Review

Plot Summary

Connell and Marianne come from different worlds. They overlap only occasionally at school and when Connell picks his mum up from her job cleaning Marianne’s house. But despite the social distance between them, something draws these two together, not just once but over and over again.

Normal People is a quiet, thoughtful, emotionally intense story of young people trying to find their way in the world, and their way around each other.

My thoughts on Normal People

I read Sally Rooney’s other book, Conversations with Friends, and found it… basically fine. The perspective character got on my nerves a bit, and I found it essentially aimless, but the writing was good. Which I only mention because, as a result, I wasn’t all that fussed about reading Normal People. I was interested, partly because I knew a lot of people were loving the TV adaptation, but assumed it would be much the same.

But then I was gifted Normal People, and so I really didn’t have any reason not to give it a go! And, although it has similarities, I found Normal People significantly more absorbing.

It isn’t always easy reading

Normal People isn’t the kind of book you necessarily enjoy. I appreciated it, I was sucked into it, I got invested in it, but I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it. It’s frequently either sad or slightly frustrating. Sometimes both! But the two protagonists feel layered and real, and the depth to which you ache for them is a testament to that.

So, what about our main characters? Marianne is brilliantly smart, a social outcast, well off and awkward. Connell is popular, although not completely sure of himself. He’s also smart, but comes from a “bad” background, apparently. There’s a very interesting dynamic that you see between the two. From early on they seem to share an unexpected understanding, but at the same time the groundwork is laid from very early for potential miscommunications. They’re quite honest and up-front with each other, especially considering their age. But there’s plenty of room for confusion in the gaps between their understandings of themselves and the way they see each other.

I felt very protective of Marianne for a lot of the book. She seemed very vulnerable to me, while also being obviously very advantaged in many ways. Connell seemed the more ‘together’ of the two, at least to begin with. As the book went on, the way they relate to each other shifts in some interesting ways.

The writing in Normal People took me a moment to adjust to

It’s written in the present tense, but a close third person perspective. That makes for an interesting combination of immediacy and distance. It’s also one of those books that foregoes speech marks for dialogue, which creates more of a stream-of-consciousness vibe. It’s not a technique I love, but it didn’t bother me either.

There are some stunningly beautifully written moments, and I loved the way Rooney chose to hone in on specific details. There’s a moment in a nightclub, for instance, when Marianne is assaulted. It’s a brief moment, played off as a joke by the guy who does it, and the many people who see it happen. The writing doesn’t make that much of it, but Marianne’s confusion and pain is vivid all the same. I also think it’s nicely handled in terms of the way other characters respond, with a few immediately recognising why she’s so upset and not attempting to minimise it, despite the social pressure in the other direction.

Time skips forwards each time we change perspective, and we alternate each chapter between Connell and Marianne. These time skips vary, from days to months, and it can be a little disorientating at times. Particularly when, within a section, the writing will flashback to some event that occurred during the last time jump.

There were things that I wish had been explored more

I expected the wealth disparity between Connell and Marianne to come up more than it did. Considering it was quite emphatically set up in the opening chapters! It’s mentioned at times, but I was definitely expecting it to be a bigger part of how they related to each other. Particularly once they were at university, and in a drastically different context.

There was something going on around Marianne’s relationships, which was obviously tied to her troubled family life. I don’t know if I loved the way that was handled. It might have been nice to spend some time on how she could have moved towards a happier head-space. Ideally independently of any boyfriend! Neither character seems to do much in the way of growing, but I found Marianne’s emotional path particularly troubling.

A lot of the characters feel two-dimensional. With Connell and Marianne, although they don’t change tremendously, you’re getting a direct window into their thoughts and the way their outlooks shift as the plot progresses. I found the supporting characters interesting enough, but it would’ve been nice to see some layers to them.

Summary

Normal People has some honestly beautiful writing, and I found it a compelling portrait of miscommunication and faltering relationships. No matter how frustrating or depressing I found it, and it was often both of those, I couldn’t leave it alone. If you liked Conversations with Friends, I think this is a pretty sure bet for you. But even if you didn’t, I think Normal People could be worth a try. You, like me, might find yourself pleasantly surprised!