Review: Normal People by Sally Rooney

Release Date: April 16th, 2019

Genre(s): Adult Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction

Publisher: Hogarth Press

Pages: 273

Rating: 

Synopsis

Normal People follows Connell and Marianne, two high school students. Connell is popular and well-liked, and Marianne has no friends. After several visits at her house, Connell and Marianne take a liking to each other – but this is kept secret at school. Fast-forward to college and Marianne is doing well socially, while Connell is at the sidelines. Throughout college they circle each other and keep a safe distance – until one day they must prove how far one will go for the other.

Review

I’m ultimately very conflicted about Normal People. I was pleasantly surprised by the dynamics of Connell’s and Marianne’s relationship and, in a sense, how atypical it was. But at the same time, there were some aspects of the book that were not explored as well, as well as some elements of the writing that I felt did not contribute well to the story as a whole.

At the start of Normal People, Marianne is introduced as a smart student who is a social outcast and frequently bullied by her peers. We quickly learn of her home environment and how her isolation extends to her home life, but this part of the book fell flat for me. The book never really delves into why this quiet girl is so outclassed, and the fact that the entire school wants nothing to do with her on the basis of what appears to be so little made little sense to me.

Additionally, I wasn’t completely sold on the writing from the beginning. The dialogue in Normal People lacks quotations – which is a stylistic choice that makes sense for the story that it tells, but I can see how some people wouldn’t prefer this. The book also features small time jumps, where an event is mentioned (usually one that happened a few days to weeks ago), and then it jumps back to the details of that event. I found this distracting more than anything and I wish the storytelling would have been more linear here.

Something that I was very pleasantly surprised by though was how the relationship between Connell and Marianne was explored. This was what really made the book pick up for me toward the end. The description of the relationship dynamic in the synopsis is what got me interested in the book in the first place (and was something I felt I could relate to personally), so to see this executed in this way was a big redeeming factor for me.

With the way that Normal People is written, I can absolutely see why some people like this book much more than others. I think that the way that this book is written (especially the elements I discussed in this review) is a big part of what drives people’s opinions of this book. Additionally, Normal People shows a more general exploration of the character’s lives, and leaves more of the deep-dive up to the reader. These elements of the story ultimately left me conflicted, but I did like the story itself overall. And regardless of the technical elements of this novel, I am certainly curious about the adaptation of this book and how it will tell this story.