Normal People

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW (but also this doesn't feel like a book that can be spoiled, really, so read on at your own risk)

i have very complicated feelings about this book. i was just talking about it with my mum and i think what i told her is the easiest way to say it: i liked parts of this book (quite dearly) but i don't think i like this book as a whole - hence the slightly ambivalent and careful three stars.

i don't think i can deny that sally rooney's writing style is really up my alley - i love the way her characters are allowed to think on the page, explicitly, complexly, full of contradictions and feelings and logic and inconsistencies. it's clean, in a lot of ways, without beating around bushes. that's refreshing, to me at least. i liked the ways in which connell and marianne were allowed to struggle with their identities and their feelings and their surroundings - things that are common and important and intense while you're growing up. mostly during the first half of the book i really liked seeing marianne's individuality come out during scenes with other people, such as during this one:

???nothing would feel more exhilarating to her at this moment than to say: they???ll be on their way shortly. how much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive???

???You think you???re so special, do you? said Denice. Marianne let her eyes close. No, she said. I don???t.???

???He???s explained it, or tried to explain it, in his emails to Marianne. For her the scholarship was a self-esteem boost, a happy confirmation of what she has always believed about herself anyway: that she???s special.???

“Would she ever be happy? And what kind of happiness would it be? ... But in the end she has done something for him, she's made a new life possible, and she can always feel good about that ... [For] her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once.”