Normal People by Sally Rooney: A Review
A simple story about two people trying to live "normal" lives. A review by Jennifer.
I. Introduction
Normal People was unexpectedly touching to me. This is my dip into the world of literary fiction. I finally understand why those who love Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf or Sylvia Plath love Sally Rooney. I am one of those people now.
II. Review
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, says Marianne. I don’t know why I can’t be like normal people.”
– Normal People, p. 181 (July 2013)
After reading countless negative reviews of Normal People, I was sure I would think this book was boring. Sceptical but intrigued, I found myself compelled to pick up one of those insular books where nothing happens and it simply lives and breathes the feelings and relationships between a small set of characters. I yearned for a book that was like an Austen or Woolf novel, but in a modern setting; and so on a whim, I picked this book off my sister’s bookshelf and read.
Normal People revolves around Marianne and Connell through their late high school and university years as they pull away and gravitate towards each other over and over. It’s about feeling unworthy of love, lost hope, awful friendships and relationships, human psychology, and loneliness. The novel examines the co-dependent dysfunctional relationship between Marianne and Connell; here, their presence is all encapsulating, leaving no room for any other person. In metaphorical terms, Marianne and Connell are in searing colour, while other characters are dull and grey.
There is no one way to summarise either their character or their relationship. Every person who reads this book will perceive it differently, some simply see two people who simply break up and get back together, but I think their relationship is much more complicated than that. Mariane and Connell have ever-changing identities as people, alternating in the power and trust the two have over each other, and yet even as they break apart they seem to inevitably fall back together like gravity, in a slightly different way each time. As the book ends four years after their relationship began, it still garners whispers of being destructive for both of them by the end. However, I loved how both Marianne and Connell could see and recognise the harmful aspects of their connection from years of mistakes and reckless decisions.
The ending of Normal People is hopeful like the better parts of Marianne and Connell’s lives and relationships are only about to begin as they rebuild themselves into being “normal people” with normal lives.
III. Favourite Quotes
“Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell.”
– p. 1 (January 2011)
“Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was and become part of it.”
– p. 11 (February 2011)
“One night the library started closing just as he reached the passage in Emma when it seems like Mr. Knightley is going to marry Harriet, and he had to close the book and home in a state of strange emotional agitation. He’s amused at himself, getting wrapped up in the drama of novels like that. It feels intellectually unserious to concern himself with fictional people marrying one another. But there it is: literature moves him.”
– p. 68 (November 2011)
“Now he has a sense of invisibility, nothingness with no reputation to recommend him to anyone.”
– p. 70 (November 2011)
“Marianne, he says, I’m not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.”
– p. 113 (July 2012)
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, says Marianne. I don’t know why I can’t be like normal people. […]
In what way? he asks.
I don’t know why I can’t make people love me.”
– p. 181 (July 2013)