Normal People

Man is this ever a polarizing read.

On one hand it's a YA romance. Marianne is the dorky rich girl and Connell is the popular working class football star whose mom cleans Marianne's family home. If that sort of high school cliche doesn't sell you it soon slouches into NA territory. Marianne hooks up with the wrong kind of guys and Connell dates bland nice girls. Will they or won't they? We spend the entire book watching the two dance in and out of each others lives in what amounts to a Marxist romance novel. People hate this and the growing social media hype surrounding author Sally Rooney isn't exactly endearing her to serious readers.

Well screw them. All aboard the hype train!

I loved Normal People. As Rooney states, it's essentially a nineteenth century novel dressed up in contemporary clothing. Jane Austen for the social media set. Say. No. More. Marianne and Connell are recognizable types in high school but in college their status flips. Marianne is suddenly interesting and surrounded by a large coterie of friends and acquaintances while Connell feels like a milk-drinking culchie lost among the prep school kids in their plum chinos, carting around MacBooks. The two weave in and out of each others lives. Sometimes dating, sometimes just friends, and to me it never mattered whether they ended up together or not - it felt more like an examination of a pivotal four years post high school where they both wrestle with what it means to be in a relationship, grapple with depression and grief, understand their own worth and contend with the shifting power dynamics inherent with relationships. Consider me a fan.

https://youtu.be/WVTgzL9ZCj8 for more gushing over the hardest book you'd ever want to try and handsell.