Normal People
Reviewed by Jakey Newton
Sally Rooney is an Irish author and screenwriter whose work has stormed the shelves and screen over the past few years. Her debut novel Conversations with Friends, a book I am very excited to read, was followed up by the amazing feat in literature known as Normal People. Since it’s 2018 release, and it’s 2020 show release, it has become the quintessential modern romance story, exploring the complicated and absurd events that follow a modern relationship.
Connell and Marianne meet in school, but they don’t hit it off straight away. That doesn’t stop their lives from intertwining as they leave their hometown in Western Ireland. As they grow and change through the years that we follow their story their relationship grows and changes with them. Because of their often-infuriating unwillingness to accept one another, Connell and Marianne create a lip-biting, breath-holding, edge-of-your-seat romance that transcends others like it by being undeniably real. There is a weight to this story, and a feeling of sorrow for them both.
Normal People looks at a relationship as more than two people walking down a path to a happy ending. It uses the characters of Connell and Marianne to explore how complicated it is to traverse a young relationship in the late 2010’s. With social media, exploration of sexuality, severe rise in negative mental health, hormones, societal pressures, and many more aspects pilling over our heads there is a lot of fear and confusion in adolescents that make relationships all the more difficult. By no means am I saying that relationships have ever been easy; Normal People merely highlights the struggle today, and how it has led to a blurred line in what it actually means to be ‘with someone’. The age that we see Connell and Marianne, from the end of college and through university, is a very difficult period for young people finding themselves. The world is irritably complex and Rooney uses that idea to showcase what university is like today.
The book uses time jumps in between chapters across different times of Connell and Marianne’s life together – though they may not always be ‘together’. The result feels like a modern When Harry Met Sally. When Harry Met Sally is my all-time favourite film, and so this is nowhere near a criticism. The use of time jumps is a lot more drastic in When Harry Met Sally, whereas Normal People uses it to jump months on average. This is a format that I think is very easy to digest, and often used without much attention given. The only reason that this is highlighted is because instead of chapter titles the reader is given how much time has passed since you left off with Connell and Marianne. The story is fresh and modern, the characters are relatable and likeable, and though it bares similarities to the 80’s classic, it stands on its own as a modern classic.
I cannot continue without mentioning Sally Rooney’s irrefutable talent in writing conversation and her clear understanding of the modern world. Unlike other books, Sally Rooney has embedded the characters speech into the narration. She has done away with the speech marks and simply uses the narrator to introduce characters speech, creating an easy flow as you follow the words along the page. With this aspect, Sally Rooney’s Normal People feels like a tale being told to you, connecting the reader to the narrator.
Strangely, in the month since I finished Normal People, a lot of the elements that made me rave about it so much have slowly faded from my mind. In preparing for this review I had to go back and check some aspects that I had wanted to talk about. I haven’t stopped talking about this book with friends and family, extending my love for it and my recommendation. However, now that I have needed to dip into specifics about what I liked about it I seem to be lost for words for what grabbed me. Of course, this could be down to my memory, or how many other books I’ve read this month. There are many other reasons for my blank memory but in the end I don’t think it entirely matters how long specifics stay with you, when what is left is a warm and loving feeling for a book that has brought something into you. Normal People takes you on a journey with a very real feeling that makes you feel connected. I urge anyone who is surviving through or has survived university to read this book and feel taken back. I urge anyone who loves interesting literature to let yourself be taken into this wonderfully told story. I applaud Sally Rooney for her work and am increasingly excited to see what she will bring to the world next.
“It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”
– Sally Rooney, Normal People