I loved this. I don't have much else to say so I'm going to repeat myself. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this.

I’m not understanding the hype because I didn’t love Normal People. I felt it dragged through most of the book, to the point where I would choose to read something else before this novel (something that rarely happens). The writing was very generic at times with paragraphs that left me wondering: what was the point? An example would be something similar to “she got her coat out of the closet and put it on. Then she left.” And the ending felt abrupt and disjointed. But rather than hanging on the edge of my seat wishing I could find out what is next for these characters, I merely turned page and said “huh, I guess that’s it.”

I tried. I really did. I wanted to love this book as much as it seems every single other person on the planet does right now, but it just wans't at all for me. The writing is sparse (and inspired little feeling one way or the other, though I didn't find it particularly accoomplished), the characters and the plot are neither particularly interesting, and although this book is relatively short it took me a very long time to read because I just didn't care to keep turning the pages. I know this book is widely beloved and so I feel OK adding my negative review to the mix, and I would definitely recommend checking it out for yourself if you're interested, but yeah... not my cup of tea.

A true example of literature.. Great character driven book, a very intelligent book. The characters were lovable, yet so vulnerable. I was captivated from page one with Marianne and Connell. A first love that was real and enduring. Being a voracious reader, I was surprised to have not recognized this great author . I plan on reading “ Conversations with her friends “ soon. Thank you for my advance copy of this wonderful novel. I will definitely recommend this author, and this book to my friends and family, but only to those that are serious readers and can appreciate A great literary novel.

Thanks for this copy of Normal People.

Sally Rooney has an incredible emotional intelligence. Most of this book takes place in the moments Mariane and Connell (growing up together) are sharing and it's all a play in reactions. Their conversations develop themselves so naturally while remaining so crucial.

The way Rooney displays humanity, self-doubt and the hurt we do to ourselves is incredible. She wrote a book about how life is complicated and it's hard to do what's good, either because of social pressure, anxiety, or self-deprecation. It's also about trauma and hardship and how it can affect someone. If you've been following my stories on Instagram, you know how much this book hurt me because the writing is just so raw and true. So, trigger warning, reading this can be highly depressive.

I'm not going to comment on the ending. But I'm fine with it.

This story about love, friendship and an equal amount of issues, Normal People by Sally Rooney, is captivating. It’s hard to put down and could possibly bring up emotions and feeling we sometimes keep suppressed. It is a love/friendship story of Connell and Marianne in Ireland, from their late high school years through university and grad school. Their awkward and sometimes secret love affair continues to have it’s up and downs as they navigate their school, friends and family issues; and boy, do they have a lot of family issues. You find yourself rooting for them some of the time and wanting to slap them other times. Their relationship is deeply felt and sometimes holds together by a thread. I thouroughtly enjoyed this book. Thank you #Faber&Faber #Normal People #SallyRooney

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. However, in the interest of full disclosure, this book was not for me at all. The complete lack of punctuation for dialogue, time that shifts from past to present--sometimes within the same paragraph--blurring the chronological timeline, and the characters themselves speaking over each other made this a muddle to get trudge through. I struggled and almost gave up several times. In fact, I did give up...but came back, because it had been touted so highly.

In short, a much heavier editorial hand is needed here and a proofreader as well because the comma splices alone made myself, being a proofreader, weary trying to wade through. I don't think the message quite makes the transition. A very watered down version of miscommunication and friendship turned more. I kept expecting *something* to happen, but it never did. We just kept being told things...and never shown anything. I don't know. Like I said. This book, just wasn't for me.

This was a difficult book to read. Very slow and drawn. I just didn't read any normal. It was a chore.
Thanks, NetGalley for an arc for my honest review.

Do the people you have relationships with bring out the best in you? Do they expose the real you? Are you willing to be completely vulnerable with them? Do you know the person you want to be? These are just a few of the simple questions this book examines! I'd consider it a social commentary with an emphasis on friendship and romantic relationships and an exploration of what's weird and what's normal. The writing is strong; with smart and witty dialogue between the characters. I actually felt the tension as the reader. It's a depressing book but I'm glad I read it.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an early release in exchange for an honest and fair review.

This was out of my comfort genre zone-but so thrilled I took a chance. I cheated and read this one early-only because I saw all the buzz it was getting in the UK. I can honestly say that this was my favorite book of 2018.

This felt so personal-every page I felt like an outsider looking into something that was so private and maybe shouldn't be witnessing. I loved everything about this story; even though the characters were deplorable. This story broke my heart.

I think I may have found a new favorite author. I devoured this book in two sittings. I finished this of Nov 18 and still thinking about it today.

I recommend this to anyone and everyone!

I would like to thank Sally Rooney, Crown Publishing, and Netgalley for a chance to read and review this one. All opinions are my own.

(Will post this closer to publication date in the US) Thank you again for allowing me to read this one!

3.5 Stars

If I were to simply tell you what this story is about on the surface, it would end up sounding too commonplace to be of much interest. A story of a popular high school boy, Connell, whose mother cleans house for the mother of an awkward high school age girl, Marianne. A girl who is somewhat of social outcast at their high school. Aside from seeing him routinely outside of school when he picks his mother up at her house, the only other thing they have in common is that they’re both bright students. In fact, they are the smartest in their class. Book smart, anyway.

A somewhat awkward relationship starts as they have small opportunities to talk while he waits for his mother to finish her cleaning chores, and it isn’t long before they are involved in a secret, sexual relationship. Secret, because he doesn’t want his friends to know, and because she is so used to being treated poorly by her family and others, this doesn’t seem to raise an issue for her.

After graduation, they both attend Trinity College in Dublin, and their roles are reversed in terms of popularity. This creates a personal struggle for Connell, and for Marianne, as the shift in their relationship becomes more apparent, their friendship begins to be affected.

Following their on-and-off relationship over the years, this began to suffer, for me, as the story went on. There seemed to be rather significant gaps in the story, I didn’t understand her lack of a relationship with her family, her brother’s abusive attitude and behavior, or her mother’s lack of anything approaching affection for her. There were parts that I loved, parts that I found disturbing, and parts that just felt awkward. Overall I found myself deeply moved, and alternately disturbed, by this story.


Pub Date: 16 Apr 2019

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Crown Publishing / Hogarth

I found this book quite tedious. I appreciated it, but I didn't particularly enjoy it. As an American reader, I didn't quite understand all the nuances and the school culture of the setting.

Nominated for the 2018 Booker Prize, NORMAL PEOPLE explores an on-again, off-again relationship between Connell and Marianne, who grow up in a rural Irish village then move to Dublin for university. This is territory charged with danger: first love, self-doubt, coming-of-age in the 21st century, peer pressure, social expectations, emotional (and physical) abuse, depression, recovery. The novel invites readers into the ways that this couple creates their own little love world, understood by them alone. In essence, these two cannot live without each other, yet they keep pushing each other away. Sally Rooney’s careful prose plunges into each separate universe, a mixture of psychological and situational suspense. Sections alternate between Marianne’s world and Connell’s, each nuance of vulnerability revealed in close third-person narrative. The dynamic between Marianne and Connell is super slow-burn—the book spans four years—or is it an excruciating simmer? I quite enjoyed being part of this world, which argues perhaps most strongly for the practice of human empathy. Be kind to the self, kind to others, and most of all, hold close your soul mate, should you be fortunate to recognize them.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I highly recommend this book to any woman struggling with self worth. It was heartbreaking and eye opening to delve into Marianne's world and view how she accepted so much less than she deserved from others.

This would be a perfect choice for book club discussions and for mothers and daughters to read together.

If Normal Means Slightly Boring, These are Some Very Normal People

Young Irish writer Sally Rooney has a type: The strong silent seem to dominate her latest low-adventure, small stakes novel about pre- to barely-adults, Normal People. Two high-schoolers embark on a friends-with-benefits relationship when the rich and misunderstood Marianne and poor but popular Connell start talking and they take that connection up and through university. They often attempt exclusivity, but are more likely to get signals crossed and date other people while remaining emotionally loyal to one another.

It’s a slow story, filled with ruminating chats in bed, plenty of alcohol, and dicky young men but Rooney has a gift for the subtle (although subtle to the point of nothing is a problem) and it’s an entertaining travel back to a time when glances across parties and who shows up to them can make or break a weekend. At times it seems like these two odd fellows will never quite get it right but perhaps normal is as normal does–if everyone feels like an outsider, who are the ones inside?

Wendy Ward
http://wendyrward.tumblr.com/

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a quiet coming of age story that is profoundly sad in ways but very true to the human experience. The main characters are hard to like in ways when we are first introduced to them as teens, but they are unlikable in ways that are true to the angst of the teenage years and have flaws we all have before we grow up some. The book follows them through their university years and into adulthood, so we see them grow and mature. Rooney crafts their story in way that makes you feel the intensity of so many situations in the story, and I found myself getting teary many times because I had such strong emotional reactions to it. Readers who enjoy character-driven stories and literary love stories that aren't all sunshine and roses will enjoy this book.

Sally Rooney’s much-lauded novel, "Normal People," was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.  And  perhaps this  beautifully-written but uneven novel is characteristic of erratic Booker trends. Though the prize once promoted brilliant, complex novels by Ruth Prawer Jhabavala, Anita Brookner, Salman Rushdie, A. S. Byatt, and Ian McEwan, it now favors historical novels and Americans.  Rooney’s Irish Millennial novel may have been an afterthought in a longlist that included a graphic novel and a thriller.  (By the way, the Man Booker Prize just lost it’s sponsor.)

“Millennials are different.”  That’s what I keep hearing.  And the  Millennial novels I’ve read, among them Natasha Staggs’s  "Surveys," Catherine Lacey’s "The Answers," and Emma Cline’s "The Girls," leave the impression of dangerous emptiness, passivity, and a sense of the absurd.

"Normal People" is less offbeat: it is about Marianne and Connell and their hooking up and splitting up and friendship and depression and hooking up again.  They’re rather like the characters in "Girls," though less sympathetic than narcissistic Hannah (Lena Dunham) and her pals from Oberlin.

The protagonists grow up in the same town in Ireland.  Marianne is a loner from a wealthy family, and Connell, the maid’s son, is popular and athletic.  The two embark on a secret sexual relationship that improves Marianne’s self-esteem until Connell asks someone else to the prom.  And this is a typical situation in the lives of this unstable couple.

And then they go to Trinity, where their status is reversed: Marianne fits in with the rich, privileged students, while Connell is friendless and struggling.  Unsurprisingly, Marianne knows a lot of assholes.  She gets into an S/M relationship with Jamie, a thoroughly nasty rich student, while Connell finds a stable, happy young woman, Helen.  Still, Connell has a thing for Marianne and is protective.  And when Marianne goes to Sweden for a year, she is briefly involved with a sadistic photographer.

But why is Marianne so unstable?  The psychology is a tad too simple–Marianne has both family and rich-girl problems–and Connell has class insecurity and a tendency to depression. "I don’t know what’s wrong with me, says Marianne. I don’t know why I can’t be like normal people."

Rooney’s prose is graceful, and her description of depression is powerful.  Simple writing, often very strong, but what ever happened to strong heroines?    That’s the problem I have with Millennial novels.  Give me Doris Lessing, Mary McCarthy, Gloria Naylor, and Margaret Drabble.

Connell and Marianne go to school together, but that’s it. Yes, Connell’s mother cleans Marianne’s house, but he’s handsome and well-liked and good at soccer (football in this Irish book), and she’s the school’s untouchable loser outcast. But when they start hanging out at her house little by little they eventually develop a sexual relationship that turns into a deep intimate friendship when they go to off to the same college. As they go through life, they grow and change and stay the same and have difficultly expressing how they feel and connecting. I expected to dislike this, but I loved it. I didn't expect to - I read a bunch of articles calling Rooney THE MILLENNIAL NOVELIST and stuff like that and it mainly made me want to roll my eyes. But I was into it. Connell and Marianne felt like real people. Real people my age. I cared about them and I understood them. Of course it's infuriating when people can just say what they feel - but I can't say how I feel. Most of my life I've barely known what I felt, except for too much! This book was compelling and honest and real without being exhausting or a depressing mirror. I will keep reading Rooney.

Normal People by Sally Rooney is considered new adult fiction. It follows the ups and downs of the relationship between Connell and Marianne from high school through college. I have to admit I didn't really like this book. I found the relationship between protagonists extremely frustrating. I do like Sally Rooney's writing and found many moments relatable, but I didn't find either character likable. Fortunately, this novel is about 288 pages, so I finished it.

I simultaneously really enjoyed this book and was totally frustrated by this book. OK, it's more that I was frustrated by the two main characters in the book: Connell and Marianne. But I think that's the point. Normal People is pretty much a huge warning to passive people... Do NOT be passive in your relationships or you will never get what you want!

The book started out a little roughly for me. Basically, Connell wants to date Marianne, but will only do so in secret since she's pretty much the outcast in their high school. It's cringe-worthy how he treats her, but it's also cringe-worthy how she allows him to treat her. But I guess that's high school, right? We also keep getting glimmers of the fact that Connell is actually a good guy, which makes it even more upsetting that he's treating Marianne this way.

I started to get more into the novel as Connell and Marianne graduate from high school and enter college. They float in and out of each other's lives, sometimes as friends and sometimes as more... But their passive personalities make it tough for a real serious relationship to form.

I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that it's an emotional novel that's strangely relatable. It's not that I would necessarily compare myself to either Connell or Marianne, but they both have characteristics that most people will be able to relate to, including fear of what others think of you and fear of rejection. Normal People will also make you wonder what could have happened if you just said what you wanted to say without fear. I definitely think this one will be a hit for Sally Rooney!