Normal People by Sally Rooney

Reading this book, I felt like I was seeing something immensely beautiful, and utterly incomprehensible to my unsophisticated mind. There are a variety of  themes in Sally Rooney’s writing, and she comments on class, on love, on power dynamics, on the way we try to alter the world’s perception of us, on mental health, and more.

All this complexity is delivered in such a simple, elegant style, it’s shocking.

 I normally prefer a richer writing styles, with long self-indulgent sentences, and fleshy, delicious, descriptions (the Atlas Six  is a good example of this). But you melt into Sally Rooney’s writing style like butter on a hot day.

She chooses not to use quotation marks, blurring the lines between the characters inner lives, their speech and their actions. It’s irritating at first, and I initially thought the author was putting her own stylistic preferences over the reader’s comfort. But you get used to it. It has an ascetic appeal. It takes away the distractions, and you focus more on the words themselves, the flow of the narrative.  

Sally Rooney is like one of those people who text in all lowercase. Most people overuse capitals  and exclamation marks to show emotion, so people who text in lowercase seem a little cool by contrast. Similarly, Sally Rooney’s prose can initially seem a little detached. But the book is far from cold. The emotion comes in rolls and waves. The sentence structure, the  lack of quotation marks, the lack of exclamation marks- all these take away the first bite of the anguish. But they do not stop it from coming through. The book is exceptionally emotional, in fact, even though there’s a lag before you realise it. 

The book is essentially about two people, Connell and Marianne, who have known each other since high school. It’s how they evolve over the years, how they are eternally drawn together, and how they change in response to each other. 

 

Connell is, at first, popular and well-liked. He is athletic, and academically proficient- on the whole, well-adjusted, almost a ‘jock’. Yet, he is also the child of a single mother who cleans houses. He looks for the intellectual fulfilment in going to college that would not normally been available to people of his socio-economic class. He is deeply sensitive to others feelings and opinions, and cares too much about what people think of him. 

Marianne is initially a social outcast, though she comes from a wealthy family. She is initially rebellious, defiant in her social exile. However, her abrasiveness fades away as she moves into college. She has deep-rooted self-hate issues, stemming from an abusive childhood in a dysfunctional family, and these self-hate issues make her accept ill-treatment from her friends and partners.

 

They form an unlikely connection in high school, becoming romantically involved, though Connell keeps their relationship secret due to fears what their relationship would to his social status.

Their relationship is marked by shifting power dynamics. Connell initially has the upper hand, because of his superior social status in school. His social edge means he can keep her hanging and make her accept their relationship on his terms alone. However he balance shifts when they enter college and Connell becomes the outsider in the wealthier social circles of college, while Marianne is accepted. 

This change sends Connell into depression, and though Marianne seems to flourish, her underlying self-hate issues spiral out of control. 

Sally Rooney is at her best as she describes the reactions of the characters, especially Connell, to the shifting tide of their relationship. Their relationship alternates between being friendly and romantic, and their feelings for each other change constantly. 

Honestly, I didn’t enjoy the characters themselves too much. They were complicated and flawed, like fractured glass, but though well written, they weren’t enjoyable as such. Of course, there is no need for characters to be ‘likeable’, and well written characters always have a few shades of grey, but you do need to be drawn to them, fascinated by them. And I just didn’t feel drawn to them. The were complicated, but not interesting enough for me to really look at them and try to unpuzzle them.

However, their complicated relationship was extremely compelling, and 

The novel was entirely character driven, the story leaping through time intervals in their life. However, the entire span of the novel is less than a decade, which I liked, because most novels written in a similar time-gap style encompass the entireties of lives. The characters have long, satisfying character arcs, and they get worse before they get better. 

The ending is satisfying, with closure, but it was still a bit startling to turn the page  and see acknowledgments written there.  It was crisp, like the rest of the novel, no closing monologue, no long conclusion. I liked that. 

On the whole, this was a 4 star read for me. The crisp beauty of the writing style makes up for characters who are a little off-putting. It was a memorable read, though I didn’t enjoy every moment of it.

 I’ll probably read this book again. I didn’t entirely grasp the themes at play, and I feel like I have to do them justice.