This book was emotionally wrenching. I couldn't binge on this book because it was almost painful to read about Connell's and Marianne's relationship, but at the same time, I couldn't stop reading it because I had to know how things were going with them.

This book is real. It's mental illness, bullying, abuse, poverty, and class systems. It's a couple who clearly love each other and belong together, but who both feel inadequate and unlovable. It's miscommunication and unsaid words.

This book was too much and too little and just right.

BuzzFeed says Sally Rooney “really captures millennial life.” The New Yorker cites her reputation as “the first great millennial novelist,” Bookforum notes her status as the “first great millennial author,” and the New York Review of Books goes straight for the “great millennial novelist,” although all three of those publications note it’s something other people are saying about her. A very Rooney-esque maneuver, really.

The Irishwoman is far from the first author under 40 to publish a book, even a very good one, so it’s hard to avoid the idea that a substantial part of Rooney’s hype accrues to the fact that she addresses the subject matter the literary establishment has traditionally associated with generational avatars: the vagaries of white heterosexual romance.

Rooney has an unmistakable knack for capturing the distinctively brittle energy of 21st century relationships. Much of her new novel, Normal People, could be described as a millennial When Harry Met Sally: we watch two central characters, college-aged for most of the book, circle around the question of whether they will ever give up and acknowledge for once and for all that they’re soulmates.

The difference between Marianne and Connell and Sally and Harry is that whereas the latter couple think that being friends requires staying out of one another’s beds, the former pair have a lot of sex — great sex, even.

It’s good for the reader as well as the fictional participants, because Rooney writes sex with taste and realism. When her characters’ clothes start to come off, we don’t hear the tawdry trumpets of a Good Part: Connell and Marianne continue their conversations. The book’s most devastating exchange, in fact, happens during coitus.

Rooney doesn’t use quotation marks, an omission that makes her prose tumble like a stream of consciousness. We’re firmly in her characters’ heads, flipping back and forth between the two in alternate sections, as they parse one another’s words and meanings.

Crucially, and humanely, both Marianne and Connell understand that they’re not trying to figure each other out so much as they’re trying to understand themselves. Although their veering in and out of coupledom turns on various vagaries of chance and communication, they ultimately know they can’t productively blame anyone but themselves for their own unhappiness.

The book’s conclusion, as understated as the rest of the story, might be interpreted as the moment when both acknowledge the status of their relationship as a decision that’s been reached. The fact that it clearly turns on psychological pain that should never have been inflicted doesn’t change the fact that it has been, in ways that profoundly affect both characters’ senses of themselves.

Normal People is a book about class (Marianne’s family has more money, but Connell’s has more decency) and about trauma, but most centrally it’s about intimacy. The terms of the characters’ intimacy change, as they try to figure out what kinds of close they can be to one another…or to anyone. What feels most “millennial,” and most revelatory, about the book is Rooney’s unflinching exploration of whether one’s most closest life partner necessarily must be one’s primary sexual partner.

Rooney’s characters might have that debate openly, between themselves. Connell and Marianne are smart and articulate, which saves the author and her readers having to pretend that we know things the characters don’t. They’re figuring it out, and so are we.

It’s refreshing, and it’s one of the reasons the book is a paradoxical page-turner despite Rooney forsaking the kind of devices typically associated with suspense. The timeline is choppy, gulping months between chapters without putting a bow on anything or slowing down for awkward exposition. It’s as though Marianne and Connell are living in an apartment across from us, with a light that sometimes allows us to see what’s happening inside. That kind of spying can be addictive, and so is Normal People.

The title isn’t explicitly referenced until deep in the book, but a search turns up dozens of occurrences of its first word.

“This is normal to them.”

“With his friends he acts normal.”

“Act normal, will you?”

“In a panic to appear normal…”

These characters are obsessed, in a sense, with being normal. If there’s one thing we understand that they don’t, simply by virtue of being inside our own heads as well as theirs, it’s that normal is precisely what they are, and what we are, and what of course absolutely none of us are.

This was a strangely riveting, poignant and overwhelming book. I had a hard time reading it all the way through like I normally do. I had to put it down and come back to it. But it is definitely a book that will stay with me forever. Normal People by Sally Rooney is a raw and unyielding look at two abnormal people, desperately trying to be normal.

Connell and Marianne attend the same school in a small town in Ireland. Connell is popular, yet quiet. Marianne is shunned by her peers and viewed eccentricity. With there completely different status’ at school there are two things that link them together — their intelligence and Connell’s single mother cleans for Maianne’s windowed mother. Even with their differences, the two start a casual sexual relationship leading to them both applying, and successfully, getting into Trinity. From there, the book takes us through years of ups and downs for the two characters. From romance, to economic and political issues, social status’ and even abuse — this book is truly a universal story of love, friendship and growing up. It was a masterpiece.

The book itself moves forwards in spaced chapters which are dated like ‘Three Months Later’, with alternating third-party viewpoints. This allowed the author to go back on key events since the last chapter and even look at the changing dynamics of the two main characters.

These two characters and their relationship is very complex and it explores intense and profound places. Marianne has a bit of a masochistic streak and is attracted to sadism. Connell on the other hand tries to escape his depression and finds it in literature. Here’s one line that really showed Rooney’s efforts to showcase the literary world:

“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.”

I found the writing of this book to be superb. It is witty and sharp. Rooney’s ability to examine her characters is profound. I would love to take her out to dinner and pick her brain. To have the ability to write such an exceptional book — the tenderness and horror of real life if captivating.

Normal People by Sally Rooney is definitely one of those books that I enjoyed but wouldn’t really recommend to everyone. It tackles a lot of issues that many would find difficult to read about. Putting that aside, this is a raw and mesmerising look at real, normal people.

Thank you to NetGalley, Crown Publishing and Sally Rooney for providing me an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. It will be published April 16.

Read it in 26 hours. Such a wonderful experience. Nothing more to say. Stop telling me to write more!

Absolutely loved this one. Completely immersive and I felt like I was reading about real people. Highly recommended.

This book had my full attention right from the beginning. The two main characters are so interesting, and so well developed. Throughout the book I found myself feeling happy when they were happy and depressed when they were depressed. It was a roller coaster of character development as they both learned and grew with and apart from each other. I found myself wishing more than once that I could give them both a hug. This book only took me a day to read but it will stay with me for a long time.

I'm not sure if I was as taken with NORMAL PEOPLE by Sally Rooney as many others were, but I found the characters complex, interesting, and a wonderful match-up. I did find it romantic, as much as a contemporary novel about college students trying to figure out their love for each other can be. It's messy and frustrating, but it also feels real to life. Rooney has a great way of building rich, thoughtful characters that you feel you could easily know in your own life.

The journey of self discovery that Connell and Marianne go through, both together and separately, was very moving. They have realistic emotions and conflicts, and their chemistry jumps off the page. The story is not a straight forward coming of age story but instead a story about learning how to grow up as best as you can and how to surround your life with the right people.

The writing in Rooney's Normal People really struck a chord with me. The characters were flawed, but I still found myself connecting to them. I think a lot of readers will find the story resonating with them for some time after they finish. I'm definitely purchasing this title for my library. Thank you!

Wow. I fully understand why this book has resonated with so many people. Watching the characters navigate their relationship felt so real. The premise of this book on the surface is so simple but it ends up being story with so much depth. Both characters were imperfect and I adored them. It was a joy to be able to follow them through their high school and college years. I will be running out to purchase Conversation with Friends ASAP!

RTC.

As a general rule I have, in the last few years, attempted not to read much literary fiction produced by folks coming out of white, middle-class, MFA traditions. For my current tastes I stand with the dictum of Food 4 Thot: decolonize your bookcase. Likewise, I've turned to the paraliterary rather than the simply literary as I approach my dissertation. However, when I saw all the buzz on twitter about Sally Rooney's second novel and appraisals of her as the "millennial J.D. Salinger," my interest was piqued enough that I requested my educator ARC to see exactly what was happening in this novel to earn it such effusive praise.

Dedicating much time to the plot would do the book a disservice here because, like many dramas in this general vein, at first glance it appears pretty glib. The jist of it is that the novel explores the relationship between two young people, Marianne and Connell, from the end of their high school tenure through their university years as they fall in and out of each others orbit romantically, sexually, and personally. Initially the surface action and phenomena of the novel could be read as trite (it isn't) and dismissed as a book about dumb kids having sex and being dumb (it is about this, but not in an unconsidered or unsophisticated way). Marianne is initally very plain and kind of a loser, Connell is handsome and on the football (soccer) team, both are wildly intelligent. Connell's mother Lorraine is a cleaner at Marianne's "mansion," the disparity between Marianne as a child of immense privilege and Connell being the son of single mother adding to the growing list of oppositions these two exemplify. The rest of the novel deals with each's relationships and their relationship to each other as on-again/off-again lovers.

Rooney makes a point of showing us both Marianne and Connell in as unflinching terms as possible, allowing the reader to see them as fucked-up if fundamentally "good" people (the question can be raised of what the "normal" in Normal People is meant to mean, and it's in the brevity and impreciseness of that title that the novel lives). What does make her the millennial Salinger is this ability to register character and feeling without making a huge to-do of things, allowing interiority to occur in the text as it would (presumably) occur mentally and without too much psychological weight or angst. If a character feels a certain way, that is how Rooney represents it in the text and any further plumbing of the psyche must reside between the conscious thought and behavior of that character. This frank approach to character is crucial and lifts a lot from traditions that have been just out of vogue long enough to be hugely rewarding in a novel published in 2019. A key example of this is in a passage about, like large swaths of the book, the interregnum between interpersonal intimacy and sex. After reconnecting in school, Rooney puts Connell's feelings about Marianne and their sexual relation ship as such:

Knowing they'll probably have sex again before they sleep probably makes the talking more pleasurable, and he suspects that the intimacy of their discussions, often moving back and forth from the conceptual to the personal, also makes the sex feel better. last Friday, when they were lying there afterward, she said: That was pretty intense, wasn't it? He told her he always found it pretty intense. But I mean practically romantic, said Marianne. I think I was starting to have feelings for you there at one point. He smiled at the ceiling. You just have to repress that stuff, Marianne, he said. That's what I do.

A passage just a few pages further in the book similarly details Marianne's feelings after they see each other having stopped hook up over that summer:

At this moment she remembers leaving a flask in Connell's car the day they drove to Howth in April, and she never got the flask back. It might still be in the glovebox. She eyes the glovebox but doesn't feel she can open it, because he would ask what she was doing and she would have to bring up the trip to Howth. They went swimming in the sea that day and then parked his car somewhere out of sight and had sex in the back seat. It would be shameless to remind him of that day now that they're once again in the car together, even though she would really like her flask back, or maybe it's not about the flask, maybe she just wants to remind him he once fucked her in the back seat of the car they're now sitting in, she knows it would make him blush, and maybe she wants to force him to blush as a sadistic display of power, but that wouldn't be like her, so she says nothing.

It's this manner of prose, devoid of certain punctuation marks and written in a way that evokes consciousness without aping Woolf or Joyce that makes Normal People a somewhat revelatory reading experience. It's not necessarily that Rooney is doing anything groundbreaking by discussing sex in fiction or portraying young relationships (by god, in terms of those two subjects this book is tame in comparison to something like Bataille's Story of the Eye), rather it is remarkable in that it finally deals with these in a way that structurally feels accurate to the current experience of youth culture. Between the use of technology, the portrayal of social relations at university in the 2010s (when I was at school, too), and the strange and anxious way that this has infected social and sexual interactions, Rooney does feel like the millennial writer for a specific moment and demographic. Calling her the millennial Salinger seems a disservice because her writing is, on the whole, more interesting and less navel gazing than his (albeit concerned with the same sort of youthful predilections that early Salinger stories and Franny and Zooey are). She might be closer to Roddy Doyle or Jhumpa Lahiri in terms of craft and voice.

There's plenty more to write about regarding this novel, and I may plan to. The book skirts class a lot of the time while still addressing it, relations of gender are key to the action of the plot, and there's quite a lot going on regarding the general experience of higher ed in the 21st century. It's hard to determining the staying power of a novel like this--it wasn't that long ago that Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding came out and drew comparison to the great WASP and WASP adjacent writers of the 50s, 60s, and 70s only to be forgotten within a couple years. I get the distinct impression, however, that Rooney will occupy for millennial a similar role to Susan Sontag or Nora Ephron as an important and singular voice on their particular bailiwick. The interesting part of that is, given that Rooney is only 28 years old, seeing what her bailiwick ends up developing into. Like I said at the outset of this review, I don't plan on indulging most straight literary stuff anymore but, after Normal People, I'll be paying attention to Sally Rooney.

Unfortunately this book just did not work for me. Stylistically, Sally Rooney's writing was very hard for me to get through right off the bat. I've seen some great reviews and I've made it a personal goal to really try and finish books that don't immediately hit all of my "go to" buttons in an effort to broaden my reading horizons. But I just didn't jive with Normal People.

I'll start with the writing. Being told every little detail of mundane actions happening becomes very cumbersome for me as a reader. I lose focus easily due to a certain rigidity and lack of depth in the story telling. This style choice works well for less quirky readers, I'm sure, but for me I just couldn't adjust to it well.

Beyond that or because of it, I could not find any connection between myself and the characters and their plights. The push/pull of their complicated relationship became repetitive and boring causing a strain on me. It struck a few missed chords when it comes to .... certain reasons for the push/pull - which is vague I know but it's one of my biggest pet peeves in romance reading and I'm trying not to be a total spoiler.

The bottom line is clearly that this book didn't work for me. I tried really hard to get it and connect with it but it fell way too flat.

A fun, breezy read that is deeper and more poignant than it seems at first glance. I really enjoyed this novel,and Rooney manages to avoid cliches and keeps it fresh and moving.

It has been a long time since I reviewed a five star book but I had no hesitation rating this book as high I can. I could not put this one down and read it in two days. I was immediately drawn in because this book felt so real to me - the language is different from anything I've ever read but it was perfect for telling this story. Marianne and Connell both felt unique and both were so complex. In fact, even by the end of the book I am not sure I understood either of them but I grew to love them both. Sometimes the best books are the hardest to describe and this one is no exception but I will say - read this!

I highly recommend this to fans of literary fiction; this is a brilliant and really complex love story, not necessarily a romance but a true story of love. Normal People comes out soon on April 16, 2019, you can purchase HERE, and I hope you consider reading this one!

For a few seconds they just stood there in stillness, his arms around her, his breath on her ear. Most people go through their whole lives, Marianne thought, without ever really feeling that close with anyone.

“He senses a certain receptivity in her expression, like she’s gathering information about his feelings, something they have learned to do to each other over a long time, like speaking a private language.”

Normal People follows Marianne and Connell, two millennials from a small town in Ireland as they make their way through adolescence and into early adulthood. Marianne, although her family is one of the wealthiest in town, is somewhat of a social outcast and doesn’t care about the opinion of others. Connell on the other hand, who comes from a working class family (his mother cleans Marianne’s family home), is confident, popular and a star on the school football team. Connell and Marianne begin a relationship in their last year of school prior to university. Self conscious and afraid that his friends will judge him for being with her, Connell insists that he and Marianne keep their relationship a secret.

Later that year, Connell and Marianne leave Sligo to attend Trinity College. Here, the roles have reversed and Marianne is now in her element - she is now the popular one and Connell finds himself struggling to fit into life at university. As we continue to follow Marianne and Connell’s on-again off-again relationship, we witness the cause and effect of social classes, major life events, and how other characters’ actions impact the protagonists themselves.

I devoured this book...I finished it in one sitting because I just couldn’t bear to put it down. Rooney expertly portrays the emotions of her characters and I felt deeply connected to Marianne and Connell throughout the novel. These two characters felt so raw and real, yet flawed. Marianne and Connell’s relationship is what brings the real power to this story. This novel explores the profound impact that one person can have on another and the ways in which lives can change course forever.

Overall, I highly recommend this novel and look forward to reading more from Sally Rooney in the future.

I can see why the reviews are so polarizing about this book. The story has so many layers and some of them are problematic.

The author, with her stark prose, gave readers 2 authentically flawed young people who recognize the feeling and the importance of one another as they try, and often fail, to emotionally mature. This is a story of how those formative relationships anchor themselves deep into the soul and continue to resonate. Rooney does masterful work in illustrating the social and emotional awkwardness, youthful narcissism and naivete that comes with the age. The characters are not shielded from their worst impulses and suffer the consequences of their actions.

I did have a few issues with respect to how the author portrayed Marianne's masochistic needs as a sort of mental illness rather than a kink. I also wish her character was as fleshed out as Connell's was. She often seems to just drift along the page. The side characters sometimes seem like they are only there to offer a distraction to Marianne & Connell.

All in all, the story made me feel very nostalgic for my college years - full of heady dreams, mistakes, miscommunication, a relationship that taught me so much and a person who fed my soul.

Irish millennial Sally Rooney is back with certainly one of the most anticipated books among critics with her 2nd novel in the new adult genre. Exploring the relationship between two people - Marianne, whose family has taught her she doesn't deserve love, and Connell, who is too concerned with what other people think - Rooney gives an insightful look at the connection between two people, sometimes positive and sometimes negative. While I can't say that I loved the book, I'm glad I read it for it definitely gave me food for thought.

This book is so perfectly quotidian! It tells of the lives of two students, who you quickly fall in love with. The story is so ordinary but beautiful! Sally Rooney did it again

I loved this book. It is Marianne and Connell's love story. The story of growing up and becoming your own person. It was reminiscent of my first experience with Irish writing - Maeve Binchy's Circle of Friends back when I was younger than the 2 lovers. At that time, for a young girl, reading the story of Benny and Jack filled me with longing. What was impressive about Normal People is that now, well on the other side of that part of my life, I found I was still filled with the same longing and grappling of what it means to love and be loved. Yet, it wasn't dripping sap. Normal People is told in simple prose that lays bare the vulnerabilities of its characters as they move towards and away from each other and back again. Absolutely lovely.

Marianne and Connell have an interesting relationship. Marianne is the quirky and intelligent outcast in their high school, while Connell is the well-liked dudebro jock. By all accounts, they should never cross paths. But Connell’s mom cleans Marianne’s family’s house, so they end up talking to each other quite a bit—twenty minutes here, twenty minutes there. Over time, they start a serious relationship—albeit a secret one, since Connell doesn’t want his friends to know he’s sleeping with the “school freak.” After an awkward goodbye when high school ends, the two go their separate ways to college.

Only they don’t. Ironically, they meet again at a random party freshman year, Connell suddenly finding himself unpopular and lonely, desperate to make friends, while Marianne is the bright and shining star in this more aggressively academic environment. The two quickly rekindle a friendship, and the rest of the book follows their on-again-off-again relationship over the next few years, as they try to figure out who they are as individuals and who they are together.

* * * * *

I loved Sally Rooney’s previous book Conversations with Friends. That story is moody and melancholy, but also quietly captivating. Thankfully, Normal People has the same complexity and is just as good, maybe even better. I was so engrossed by Marianne’s relationship with Connell. The two have such ridiculous issues with communication—I mean, for real, it’s almost not even believable at some points—but there is something about these wounded and surprisingly innocent characters that kept me coming back. It was like watching an episode of The Hills: you know it’s all a bit overwrought and manufactured, but, damn it, you’re into it.

My one big criticism is that the ending was a total dud. Reading those last few pages, I was just like, nope, can’t even. Give us more closure than that, Rooney, c’mon. But even a lackluster ending couldn’t take away from the magnificence of the rest of the novel. I just loved these little dumplings so much and, by the end, really wanted the best for them.

Keep the novels coming, Rooney. I’m already ready for the next one.

What a lovely and melancholy portrait of two young people and the way their lives intertwine. This is a book of deep psychological insight and lovely prose, but the protagonists--Connell and Marianne--do not speak or behave like characters in a fancy literary novel. They behave and speak like teenagers and adults who do not understand themselves, who do not always say what they mean, who misunderstand and misinterpret. I loved the contrast of the artful close 3rd person narration with the messy, broken people at the center of it.

When they are high school seniors, Marianne and Connell are not friends. Connell's mother cleans Marianne's house. She is a social outcast, someone who does not particularly care what people think of her and who has been judged as unstable, ugly, and undesirable though it's clear that she isn't really any of those things. Connell, despite his lower class, is popular and liked, a good-looking, smart athlete. But behind his facade he's deeply uncomfortable with himself, his place in the world, and he's mostly unattached to the people around him. Marianne and Connell are drawn together through forces they do not quite understand and this will continue to happen to them for several years. We learn more and more about just how deep the hurt and pain goes. Marianne's family is physically and emotionally abusive. Connell struggles with depression and is acutely aware of his lack of money or status. Marianne is oblivious of Connell's financial situation. Connell doesn't understand the self-destructive ways Marianne copes with her trauma. They bounce off one another, unable to understand what love is, how to give it, or how to receive it. We, as readers, watch them learn over several years who they are as individuals and who they are to each other.

I was immediately enthralled by the way Rooney wrote about these characters. Books that consider opposing points of view are a particular joy of mine, and she deftly presented the fits and starts of the relationship through many mistakes and misunderstandings. I loved how they really were young. I sometimes find myself frustrated with everyone, only to remind myself that the characters were all 18 or 20 and isn't that how everything is then? It was so acute and wise. I wanted so much to just sit Connell and Marianne down and explain it all to them. But the way you work through your life in your teens and twenties is a difficult, trying thing and that is exactly what this book is doing. These two people, both broken but neither one really understanding their brokennness, will navigate to a place of knowing.