Normal People

At seventy minutes Aidan Kennedy brought the ball up the left side of the pitch and crossed it over to Connell, who took a shot from the corner of the penalty area, over the heads of the defenders, and it spun into the back of the net. Everyone screamed, even Marianne, and Karen threw her arm around Marianne’s waist and squeezed it. They were cheering together, they had seen something magical which dissolved the ordinary social relations between them. Miss Keaney was whistling and stamping her feet. On the pitch Connell and Aidan embraced like reunited brothers. Connell was so beautiful. It occurred to Marianne how much she wanted to see him having sex with someone; it didn’t have to be her, it could be anybody. It would be beautiful just to watch him. She knew these were the kind of thoughts that made her different from other people in school, and weirder.

To cast this book off as a so-called young adult novel would be to sell it short; it deserves to be considered the existentialistic, big little book about people that it is.It circles around the main characters, Marianne and Connell, older teens in Dublin, Ireland, during the latter part of the 2000s. Their lives circle each other while the world spins around them, not making the same sense that they make to each other.

He said he wished he could show her, but there were always people around. He often makes blithe remarks about things he ‘wishes’. I wish you didn’t have to go, he says when she’s leaving, or: I wish you could stay the night. If he really wished for any of those things, Marianne knows, then they would happen. Connell always gets what he wants, and then feels sorry for himself when what he wants doesn’t make him happy.

It would be easy to try and be glib about this book, but it's entranced me. It's written with a seeming ease of action, a language and, foremostly, style that turns the characters alive and common as much—while the author has actually managed to turn them and the entire story into something very special, something that comes along once in a while, and grabs ahold of me in a way that few books can.I seldom read fiction, but this book is so very close to the bone, that it felt like reading Michel de Montaigne or Sarah Bakewell. It's just true, and, to quote Run-DMC: "real recognise real".This book runs through parallel views of the same things happening and doesn't make a big song and dance about it. The author's main strength is being able to hold matters back, to make the characters sing; it's like hearing virtuoso musicians hold back for the good of the song, as a whole.

She believes Marianne lacks ‘warmth’, by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her.

Sure, at first I hoped that some youthful, naïve, and wistful scenes would just pass, but then again, who didn't carry those things or ways of thinking in their heads when they were younger? Who doesn't, today? And that's another strength that Sally Rooney, the author, carries: the ability to portray characters and scenes as they unravel over periods of time.I recently heard somebody state that there's one specific reason for why some romantic comedies turn into classics, and that's the films where the lovers talk for extended periods of time. This book kind of hooks into that, but it's the talks themselves that snagged my attention wholly. And I kept longing back for those when I wasn't reading this book; it's been quite some time since that happened (which may say something about how little fiction I actually read).I recommend this book higher than many others. Sure, at times, the book felt a smidgen trite, but that's not really so. This book moved me quite a lot and will stay with me.

At seventy minutes Aidan Kennedy brought the ball up the left side of the pitch and crossed it over to Connell, who took a shot from the corner of the penalty area, over the heads of the defenders, and it spun into the back of the net. Everyone screamed, even Marianne, and Karen threw her arm around Marianne’s waist and squeezed it. They were cheering together, they had seen something magical which dissolved the ordinary social relations between them. Miss Keaney was whistling and stamping her feet. On the pitch Connell and Aidan embraced like reunited brothers. Connell was so beautiful. It occurred to Marianne how much she wanted to see him having sex with someone; it didn’t have to be her, it could be anybody. It would be beautiful just to watch him. She knew these were the kind of thoughts that made her different from other people in school, and weirder.

To cast this book off as a so-called young adult novel would be to sell it short; it deserves to be considered the existentialistic, big little book about people that it is.It circles around the main characters, Marianne and Connell, older teens in Dublin, Ireland, during the latter part of the 2000s. Their lives circle each other while the world spins around them, not making the same sense that they make to each other.

He said he wished he could show her, but there were always people around. He often makes blithe remarks about things he ‘wishes’. I wish you didn’t have to go, he says when she’s leaving, or: I wish you could stay the night. If he really wished for any of those things, Marianne knows, then they would happen. Connell always gets what he wants, and then feels sorry for himself when what he wants doesn’t make him happy.

It would be easy to try and be glib about this book, but it's entranced me. It's written with a seeming ease of action, a language and, foremostly, style that turns the characters alive and common as much—while the author has actually managed to turn them and the entire story into something very special, something that comes along once in a while, and grabs ahold of me in a way that few books can.I seldom read fiction, but this book is so very close to the bone, that it felt like reading Michel de Montaigne or Sarah Bakewell. It's just true, and, to quote Run-DMC: "real recognise real".This book runs through parallel views of the same things happening and doesn't make a big song and dance about it. The author's main strength is being able to hold matters back, to make the characters sing; it's like hearing virtuoso musicians hold back for the good of the song, as a whole.

She believes Marianne lacks ‘warmth’, by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her.

Sure, at first I hoped that some youthful, naïve, and wistful scenes would just pass, but then again, who didn't carry those things or ways of thinking in their heads when they were younger? Who doesn't, today? And that's another strength that Sally Rooney, the author, carries: the ability to portray characters and scenes as they unravel over periods of time.I recently heard somebody state that there's one specific reason for why some romantic comedies turn into classics, and that's the films where the lovers talk for extended periods of time. This book kind of hooks into that, but it's the talks themselves that snagged my attention wholly. And I kept longing back for those when I wasn't reading this book; it's been quite some time since that happened (which may say something about how little fiction I actually read).I recommend this book higher than many others. Sure, at times, the book felt a smidgen trite, but that's not really so. This book moved me quite a lot and will stay with me.