Normal People

Welp, that was #2 down; on to #3.

I liked this better than the first one. I didn't loathe everyone this time. I actually liked Lorraine quite a lot. But I feel like Marianne's family was more of an afterthought.

Lots of the same tricks as the first novel. Still no quotation marks, which is a thing, but it's not a thing I like at all. Aesthetically displeasing and needlessly confusing. Still the same sort of detached, passive sentences. But this time, at least we get a little more understanding of characters' beliefs, not just a character claiming to be such-and-such without providing proof, or by being the opposite. But most of the side characters, except Lorraine, seem merely functional, not really characters in their own right.

There's still the same dysfunction. Marianne and Connell don't communicate very well. I'm not sure I fully believed he loved her. Which just makes him a bit of a fool, but it's fine for the purposes of the novel. It should be more complicated than that, even though, realistically, they should just properly communicate.

And there is more women wanting to be abused. I'm not sure where the line is for Marianne, because she puts up with so much, and then decides she doesn't feel like it. She's abused by one boyfriend for ages, but in Sweden she abruptly (wisely) walks out on an artist who abuses her.

WHY is she in Sweden? It's literally like one chapter. She's just suddenly there, and then back in Dublin. But the locations are sometimes too fluid. Maybe it's just me, but a few times, I completely got lost and didn't realize where the characters were.

So this was fine. It was definitely more mature than the first novel. I wasn't as bored. But the appeal still eludes me. And I cannot help but be annoyed at the, perhaps unintentional, conflation of abuse and kink. That's two main characters in two novels who want men to beat them. It's a bit off-putting for me to read something smacking of kink, but it's not safe, sane, or truly consensual. It's never called kink, but one can't help but think...

And both Frances and Marianne completely give themselves over to a man. Yes, I'm a lesbian, so that isn't something I'm into. I get that. But...they're willing to trade their agency, especially Marianne. At the end of the novel, Connell has the opportunity to go to NYC for creative writing. And the last lines of the novel are basically Marianne telling him she'll always be there waiting for him.

And maybe because I've been reading a lot of LGBTQIA books and genre fiction (although, thrillers piss me off), and I've been spoiled by the representation of the books I pursue. But both of these are so...painfully...heteronormative. Like Frances is bi, but she seems so het it's painful. Anyway.

But as far as his relationship with Marianne, Connell is naive. This isn't love; it's codependency.

Well, on to book #3.