Fucking hell... I was going to give this three stars but the third to last sentence of the novel was such a damn farce. Is that supposed to be ironical? I really do hope so.
I liked the beginning but soon the story got really repetitive. And whenever something happened there was another jump in time and the parts which could've brought some true depth were skipped. Why was this book so superficial when it had the potential to be an impactfull masterpiece?
The writing was beautiful, though. And Lorraine is the best mom character ever (:
A compulsive and brutally nihalistic romance novel. This is my first Sally Rooney and not at all what I expected, but it's very easy to see why she has become so highly regarded. She writes her characters with such tenderness and empathy, in spite of their confounding decisions and cycles of self alienation. At the same time they possess an acute, almost meticulous physical awareness that nevertheless only makes their pain more acute.
This book is predominantly about an inability to connect to others, of superficial interactions insufficiently standing in for a deeper connection the two protagonists crave. The conclusions they arrive at are frustrating, but so deeply articulated that they make a sort of sense. Nobody is capable of unpacking their adolescent (and ongoing) trauma because it requires a vulnerability that frankly terrifies them. So they dissociate, attempt to mirror each other, cling to the closest approximation of happiness …
A compulsive and brutally nihalistic romance novel. This is my first Sally Rooney and not at all what I expected, but it's very easy to see why she has become so highly regarded. She writes her characters with such tenderness and empathy, in spite of their confounding decisions and cycles of self alienation. At the same time they possess an acute, almost meticulous physical awareness that nevertheless only makes their pain more acute.
This book is predominantly about an inability to connect to others, of superficial interactions insufficiently standing in for a deeper connection the two protagonists crave. The conclusions they arrive at are frustrating, but so deeply articulated that they make a sort of sense. Nobody is capable of unpacking their adolescent (and ongoing) trauma because it requires a vulnerability that frankly terrifies them. So they dissociate, attempt to mirror each other, cling to the closest approximation of happiness they can find. It is unrelentingly bleak and I admire the willingness to refuse an easy resolution.
The degree to which this articulates an actual worldview of impossible codependency is murkier for me, with a lot of baggage of outdated psychology being inserted as an inherent cause of the isolation everyone feels (rather than, say, the class disparity that is crudely gestured at but far outside the novel's interests). I cannot begrudge it too much as it is well in line with characters who themselves have very little awareness of the reasons they are so unhappy, but I am skeptical about the ways that viewpoint inevitably gets expanded to be some sort of social truth.
Mostly I am surprised by the book's coldness. I devoured it in a few days and came away feeling profoundly empty. I do mean this as a compliment of sorts.
"He can’t help Marianne, no matter what he does. There’s something frightening about her, some huge emptiness in the pit of her being. It’s like waiting for a lift to arrive and when the doors open nothing is there, just the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft, on and on forever. She’s missing some primal instinct, self-defense or self-preservation, which makes other human beings comprehensible. You lean in expecting resistance, and everything just falls away in front of you."
I'd obviously heard a lot of buzz about this book over the years, and among my friends, mostly mixed things. Which made me more intrigued to pick it up, as I'd heard it was a pretty intense character study of two people and how their relationship manifests from childhood into young adulthood, constantly orbit each other in irregular (and sometimes toxic) ways. I ended up really loving this. The depth …
"He can’t help Marianne, no matter what he does. There’s something frightening about her, some huge emptiness in the pit of her being. It’s like waiting for a lift to arrive and when the doors open nothing is there, just the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft, on and on forever. She’s missing some primal instinct, self-defense or self-preservation, which makes other human beings comprehensible. You lean in expecting resistance, and everything just falls away in front of you."
I'd obviously heard a lot of buzz about this book over the years, and among my friends, mostly mixed things. Which made me more intrigued to pick it up, as I'd heard it was a pretty intense character study of two people and how their relationship manifests from childhood into young adulthood, constantly orbit each other in irregular (and sometimes toxic) ways. I ended up really loving this. The depth that Sally Rooney was able to develop Connell and Marianne was incredible. I loved the unique ways that they were both deeply flawed and broken, and instead of leaning on each other as a fix, they lean on each other as a source of unconditional love.
The pacing was slow at times, and I would buy the argument that some of the beats were repetitive (do we really need to head ANOTHER long winded story about how Marianne drunkenly fights with her current toxic boyfriend of the month?), but I didn't mind this detail. Rooney writes quite accessibly and don't let the other reviews dupe you into thinking the lack of quotes was off-putting. I got confused about it maybe twice in the whole book because the formatting makes the dialogue clear.
It might be silly to say about a book with such high praise, but I'd be hesitant to recommend this widely. For those who love plot, this isn't the book for you. While it wasn't aimless, it was absolutely hyper focused on character and relationship development. For people who adore lovable characters, I also wouldn't recommend this. The characters often act in brash, disagreeable ways, driven by emotion or with the intention to hurt. For me, that's great characterization, but I know it's not for everyone. There's a bit of light social commentary in here as well, Rooney dances around issues of injustice, wealth, and privilege, but don't expect any of this to be fully realized. She hits a bit harder on the topic of class disparity which I appreciated. But if you love learning about Ireland, this has some really cool detail on regional and cultural differences within the country!
Anyway, this was good. I'll probably have to take a beat to recover before I pick up anything else by the author, but I'd certainly continue to read her works.
Shallow crud for the brainless masses. Terrible writing, uninteresting characters, zero plot, no point. Just more demonstration of how far literature has fallen. They should have called it 'Subnormal People'.
I often felt like this was a lady in college recollecting what her high school sex life was like. Isn't everyone's sex life in their teens/early 20s depressing? Just me? and Sally Rooney? Anyway it was okay but I wouldn't read it again and I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Sin duda no era un libro para mí. No sé cómo llamó mi atención y me llevó a leerlo, pero no me ha gustado nada, ni el estilo de escritura, que no aporta nada por quitar guiones sino que dificulta la lectura y la llena de incisos, sin ningún porqué. Personajes planos, incompetentes emocionalmente, que no atraen en nada, con los que me ha resultado imposible empatizar, que intercalan reflexiones semiprofundas que no encajan para nada con ellos. Una trama inverosímil que no aporta nada.
Lo más profundo que he sacado es esto que resume mis sensaciones con la novela: "Nada de lo que Connell había hecho en ellas parecía haber dejado huella en él. Todo aquel viaje transcurría como una serie de cortometrajes, proyectados una única vez, y al terminar tenía la sensación de saber de lo que iban, pero ningún recuerdo preciso del argumento. Recuerda ver cosas por …
Sin duda no era un libro para mí. No sé cómo llamó mi atención y me llevó a leerlo, pero no me ha gustado nada, ni el estilo de escritura, que no aporta nada por quitar guiones sino que dificulta la lectura y la llena de incisos, sin ningún porqué. Personajes planos, incompetentes emocionalmente, que no atraen en nada, con los que me ha resultado imposible empatizar, que intercalan reflexiones semiprofundas que no encajan para nada con ellos. Una trama inverosímil que no aporta nada.
Lo más profundo que he sacado es esto que resume mis sensaciones con la novela: "Nada de lo que Connell había hecho en ellas parecía haber dejado huella en él. Todo aquel viaje transcurría como una serie de cortometrajes, proyectados una única vez, y al terminar tenía la sensación de saber de lo que iban, pero ningún recuerdo preciso del argumento. Recuerda ver cosas por las ventanillas de los taxis."
Sin duda no era un libro para mí. No sé cómo llamó mi atención y me llevó a leerlo, pero no me ha gustado nada, ni el estilo de escritura, que no aporta nada por quitar guiones sino que dificulta la lectura y la llena de incisos, sin ningún porqué. Personajes planos, incompetentes emocionalmente, que no atraen en nada, con los que me ha resultado imposible empatizar, que intercalan reflexiones semiprofundas que no encajan para nada con ellos. Una trama inverosímil que no aporta nada.
Lo más profundo que he sacado es esto que resume mis sensaciones con la novela: "Nada de lo que Connell había hecho en ellas parecía haber dejado huella en él. Todo aquel viaje transcurría como una serie de cortometrajes, proyectados una única vez, y al terminar tenía la sensación de saber de lo que iban, pero ningún recuerdo preciso del argumento. Recuerda ver cosas por …
Sin duda no era un libro para mí. No sé cómo llamó mi atención y me llevó a leerlo, pero no me ha gustado nada, ni el estilo de escritura, que no aporta nada por quitar guiones sino que dificulta la lectura y la llena de incisos, sin ningún porqué. Personajes planos, incompetentes emocionalmente, que no atraen en nada, con los que me ha resultado imposible empatizar, que intercalan reflexiones semiprofundas que no encajan para nada con ellos. Una trama inverosímil que no aporta nada.
Lo más profundo que he sacado es esto que resume mis sensaciones con la novela: "Nada de lo que Connell había hecho en ellas parecía haber dejado huella en él. Todo aquel viaje transcurría como una serie de cortometrajes, proyectados una única vez, y al terminar tenía la sensación de saber de lo que iban, pero ningún recuerdo preciso del argumento. Recuerda ver cosas por las ventanillas de los taxis."
I really loved listening to this on audible. I loved how the author talks about psychological state of young adult mind. I was able to relate to it so much even when I don't live in Ireland. It feels how people from different countries goes through similar emotional and cognitive experiences irrespective of place.
There is probably plenty of valid criticism to generate about Rooney, but at the end of the day she crafts novels that are incredibly fun to read- even if the characters are annoyingly unable to communicate with one another.
Liked this as much as Conversations with Friends, although its a bit simpler, but like that book it deals with class, sexuality, and shyness with well-drawn characters and sharp attention to gestures.
Oh my gosh, that was depressing as fuck! I think Rooney has a real talent for writing about the intersection of friendship, vulnerability, hurt and love. Personally, I felt Marrianne and Connel as very real people, with a very strong, nearly impossible, need to connect to each other: they touch, turn away, search, come back, touch, and disconnect once again. It's a very painful cycle, but also one that is characristic, or so I'd like to think, of these times.
So uncomfortable, I could not read for more than thirty minutes at a time: I'd get so tense I'd have to stand up, pace, vent nervous energy. Also: so good, I'd always sit right back and continue reading.
It's tragic that life doesn't come with an instruction manual (would we read it if we had one?). Normal People is a compressed arc of two peoples' discovery of their Selves, of how to become human beings in a world that often makes it so hard. Rooney packs a lot of material into four years: social dynamics, family abuse, somewhat more sociopathy than (I hope) most of us encounter in a lifetime, shame, forgiveness, communication, self-hatred, privilege, acceptance, and growth. The principal characters are decent people, intelligent and with good moral sense; also flawed, being shitty to others or to themselves at times, with no training in or experience with real human …
So uncomfortable, I could not read for more than thirty minutes at a time: I'd get so tense I'd have to stand up, pace, vent nervous energy. Also: so good, I'd always sit right back and continue reading.
It's tragic that life doesn't come with an instruction manual (would we read it if we had one?). Normal People is a compressed arc of two peoples' discovery of their Selves, of how to become human beings in a world that often makes it so hard. Rooney packs a lot of material into four years: social dynamics, family abuse, somewhat more sociopathy than (I hope) most of us encounter in a lifetime, shame, forgiveness, communication, self-hatred, privilege, acceptance, and growth. The principal characters are decent people, intelligent and with good moral sense; also flawed, being shitty to others or to themselves at times, with no training in or experience with real human communication; suffering and causing pain to others because of it. Social expectations play a huge role throughout: our need for acceptance and the convoluted ways we torture ourselves and others to gain it, how crippling our social framework can be for developing a fulfilling life. How society's limited definitions ("riding", "bf/gf", "friends") completely misses the infinite variety of loving relationships we can have between two or more people. How, if we're very very lucky, we can meet and recognize and attach to the right kinds of people, ones who make us better.
I seem to have a thing for tying current life events to my book readings. In this case, I read Normal People in the context of an email exchange with a dear friend in which we spoke of intimate friendship and radical conversation: of safe communication despite discomfort, of truly listening, of commitment and perseverance despite and throughout miscommunications. So that was my frame of mind while reading the book, and while that added to the poignancy of each communication misstep, and my sadness that we don't learn earlier how to listen, what I came away with was intense admiration for Rooney: she's not even thirty and already has an exquisite sense of and empathy for the human mind. Maybe her next book will be that life how-to guide that future youngsters will read.
Ikke helt der jeg trodde den skulle være, måtte lese den før jeg så serien siden den har stått på leselista mi i et år. Tematikken er interessant nok, gjennomføringen noe uforløst men kanskje akkurat sånn livet er? Tror Conversations with Friends treffer meg bedre? Er på tross av litt mumling her en meget god tekst.
En mycket fin liten roman. Trots sitt irska ursprung är det en av de mest engelska romaner jag läst. Som en blanding av upstairs-downstairs och Austineskt uppvaktningsdrama men i modern och nyskapande tappning. Min enda, och tyvärr ganska stora invändning är att språket är bristfälligt. Det framstår som oförmöget att återge och på ett adekvat sätt framställa den underliggande berättelsen. Men i övrigt är det starkt rekommenderad sommarläsning.
