Normal People

The book was great. If you see yourselF or someone you know or you knew in Marriane or Connell. Or their “friends”. But TV series is even better.

I really disliked this book. Found the characters unlikable so I wasn't rooting for them or anything. Their relationship was just odd and I was waiting for it to get better but it just didn't.

Why is this book so popular? Seriously, why? Was everyone knocked on the head or something?

The fact that this book is hailed as being the next big modern classic, and that it's listed on the Times Next 100 is an insult to actual modern classics and all the other books on that list that are really deserving of the high praise and title.

First of all, the blurb is nothing like the story at all. Where it's supposed to be a “great romantic story,” it becomes a plotless, sex-filled story with detestable characters who have no redeeming qualities. Every other page contains a fairly vivid depiction of sex between teens and later, between young adults, that adds zero value to the story and doesn't advance the plot in any way. Furthermore, the frequent comments on female characters' bodies is gross and unnecessary. Do I really need to read about Marianne's breast every two minutes? Obviously no. The male gaze is strong with this one, even though it was written by a woman (misogyny strike 1?).

The characters themselves are incredibly flat and underdeveloped. Marianne and Connell, our main characters, are one-trick-ponies who continuously repeat the same mistakes and never learn nor grow as people. Connell in particular is incredibly infuriating. These characters are supposed to be representations of today's world, but news flash, they really aren't. Real people don't casually fantasize about beating their (abused) girlfriend. Real people don't walk around in shame of their partner for no apparent reason. Real people aren't insufferable a-holes who treat their mother like a third class citizen.

Both Connell and Marianne are constantly pegged as being “smart” and “different” in a I'm not like all the other girls/boys way which is annoying as hell. Marianne is super smart and knows everything, but Connell is even smarter still and outshines everyone because he reads and knows about books (seriously, this is the main reason why he's soooo smart). Marianne is quick to sing his praises and tell everyone how smart he is and how much smarter than her he is... okay then (misogyny, strike 2!).

The plot in this book is nonexistent. Nothing happens in this story; instead, Marianne and Connell simply orbit around one another and go through rince and repeat cycles of emotional abuse for reasons?? Plus, outside of these two, the other characters are basically just background props because they had no value to the story, serve no purpose in terms of teaching or helping the MCs, and are so woefully underdeveloped that I barely remember their names. For example Rachel, the stereotypical high school mean girl (misogyny, strike 3!): what is her point? Why is she even there (other than to serve as a contrast to poor (but smart) little Marianne who is unjustly bullied and mistreated by her classmates?

Overall, I do not recommend this to any living soul. Do yourself a favour and save your eyes (or ears) by reading something, anything, else. This book isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

one star for the audiobook narrator, two for connell's mental health journey, three for connell's anti-rich people snobbery. but let's be clear; otherwise, i really didn't care for this book

the main issue of this book is that it features two people who desperately need therapy and to work on their communication issues, but only one of them does, and we're left to suffer with the other one wandering about life with seemingly no purpose. i liked connell especially after starting university, since a lot of his depression and anxiety was relatable and understandable, but i would literally roll my eyes whenever marianne tumbled back into her life.

better than conversations with friends, made even better thanks to the audiobook and irish accents, but still... not something i really enjoyed in total

I heard a lot of good things about this book but it just wasn't for me. I read it in Swedish so maybe that contributed to some of the misunderstandings. The writing was a bit confusing and it got a bit boring towards the end so I think I would've liked it more if I just skipped 50 pages to the end. The beginning was good but then it just went downhill for me personally.

Niet te omschrijven hoe goed. Het marxisme is zo duidelijk te herkennen in Connell en Marianne. Knap hoe Rooney dat kan weergeven.

MAAR HET EINDE? Waarom

I just don't get this one. Why? Why is this popular? I'm not going to actually review it because I DNF'd at 55% and because I would likely be unfair. The characters were all terrible and uninteresting. Just not my thing, I guess.

☆☆☆☆⁵

increíble.

I assumed this to be a clichéd YA novel when I first started it (it's become rare for me to read book blurbs.. I've been diving straight into the books that call my name). As the story progressed, I found more character and feelings that could be quite relatable as a millennial going through transitions in life. There is some strangeness and familiarity. The writing style took some time getting used to but was a refreshing change as it incorporated some really interesting emotional expression.

All in all, I don't think I'd be recommending this book to anyone I personally know but I would love to explore more of the author's works.

I totally understand why people dont like this book but personally I connected with it on so many levels and sadly it was very relatable sometimes. already want to reread it

I don't understand why is this so popular. The main characters are super unlikable and flat, side characters just blend into each other as none of them have a personality (except for Lorraine, I actually liked her). I understand the stylistic and perhaps somehow symbolic choice of not using quotation marks but it makes the book just hard to read and it wasn't good enough for that to be justifiable in my opinion. If it was supposed to be about relationship between the two heroes and how they get together and then leave and then get together again - I simply couldn't care less about them or their relationship. Plus the long bland descriptions of the most mundane actions... Boring and not worth your time

3.25
Unimpressive and a disappointment but in some way it's also kind of good...

didn't really like the beginning of this book but it did get a lot better once i got past it :)

i loved this SO much

3.75 ✨
PERO Y ESE FINAAAAAAAAAL??? T.T

2.5/5 stars

I can definitely see how this book is so popular, and I'm sure I'm gonna love the adaptation, but overall the entire thing just felt pointless to me. I failed to get attached to the writing or characters and I spent more time wondering when it's gonna be over than actually reading.

3.5:

This should be called “Codependence: The Novel.”

So there's Marianne and Connell, right? Imagine the most pretentious, white British college kids you could imagine. That's our leads! Not very enticing to be quite honest, but it's a very fast read because Sally's prose flows so well.

I didn't particularly like the main characters, and the background ones weren't all that remarkable, I remember at least one boyfriend, one girlfriend, an awkward dinner in Italy, and what I'm sure was an asshat who killed himself.

That sounds harsh, but frankly, I read this in one sitting because it felt like listening to gossip about the rich kids at school, and I'm a sucker for mundane stories like that. It was a game of will-they-won't-they that I wasn't too invested in, but it was entertaining so I'd still give it a go. Plus the cover is cute.

I like to go into books blind. I don't want to know about the plot, I don't want to know the Goodreads rating, I don't want to read others' reviews until I'm done writing my own. All of these things help me feel like I'm forming my opinion in enough of a vacuum that I'm reasonably sure my thoughts are my own. This is why I picked up Normal People thinking I was in for a Little Fires Everywhere or Such a Fun Age type read. Three hours later I'm listening to the worst BDSM sex scenes imaginable on my commute to work. A wild twist, to be sure. If you are one of my coworkers, read on at your own risk.

Normal People is about how people end up tangled in each others' lives. The strange evolution of relationships that begin in hometowns. Some relationships stay the same, no matter how much time it's been. Others feel different to any other bond, no matter how much time it's been.

How family dynamics carry over into romantic and sexual ties (no pun intended, and I hate myself for leaving this in). How other people and our relationships with them can so drastically impact our sense of self, and, ultimately, whether we feel worthy, loved, understood. Whether we even know who we are. Whether we even like who we are.

Also, Normal People includes a whole slew of fictional men who I would love to physically attack. In fact, pretty much all of them are deserving of my wrath. They are a despicable lot and Marianne should try dating women. Or dating no one. Anything is better than this.

The main issue I have is hard to articulate. Some of the underlying messages about the roots of Marianne's desires felt reductive, or maybe even harmful. I don't feel qualified enough to speak definitively on this; it just felt a little off to me. Like, oh, of course she wants Connell to hurt her. The men she grew up with hurt her. Feels a little convenient. Feels a little Freudian.Are we supposed to believe that Marianne wants to be submissive because of her past? Or that it's something that exists separately, that just happened to be muddied by some men with controlling, violent tendencies? Or is the message that only some men are qualified to dominate women, if they're responsible and sensitive and take seriously the weight of the power they hold?I feel like this is a key point with potentially high, real-life stakes and ripple effects. I get leaving fiction open to interpretation, but also, if you're going to talk about these issues, how careful do you have to be about weaving in takeaway messages? How much do you have to help readers parse out what is and is not healthy? Idk y'all.

My broken pop culture brain wants to compare this to Sammi and Ron on Jersey Shore plus the familial abuse in Tara Westover's Educated. Pick this up if you want to have a weird start to your year.

Me ha parecido que la historia daba saltos que no estaban bien situados como para entenderlos.
Además me parece que el libro se repite constantemente, con el tira y afloja de la relación de los protagonistas, que me resulta siempre igual.

Otra cosa que no me ha gustado nada es que, pasan los años y los personajes siguen expresándose igual. Desde el instituto hasta que ya han terminado la universidad no cambian en absoluto su forma de hablar.
De vez en cuando en el libro la autora mete algún tema político o de impacto social para, de alguna forma, demostrar que los protagonistas son inteligentes y se preocupan por temas “adultos”, pero a la vez las conversaciones entre ellos me resultan infantiles.

He estado tentada en dejar de leer varias veces durante el libro (cada vez que la historia volvía a empezar) pero al final le he dado una oportunidad y lo he conseguido terminar.
No lo volveré a leer ni se lo recomendaría a nadie.

I loved it so much (didn't put a 5 cause the ending was not the closure i needed) i could've read 1000 pages of Marianne and Connell. It's a certain weird that i'm attached to.

I really enjoyed Rooney's style of composition, starting up each chapter with describing the setup like an eye witness then delving bit by bit into the character's thoughts and reminiscence. A structure that's repeated throughout, that feels like assembling a puzzle piece by piece.

3.5 ⭐️ pain in the mundane

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.

Good book, but slightly underwhelmed (especially after all the hype).

I liked that the main characters were relatable (and likeable to a certain extent), and it did almost make me cry... but it just didn't feel “wow” enough for 5 stars.

Good book, but slightly underwhelmed (especially after all the hype).

I liked that the main characters were relatable (and likeable to a certain extent), and it did almost make me cry... but it just didn't feel “wow” enough for 5 stars.

Would it be rather some cliché to talk about relationship in a book? Honestly, shift that position of Connell and Marianne onto other types of relationships you have in life. Well, then you will end up finding some resemblance between yours and theirs.
In a modern society, on-and-off relationships are never any rare scenes. However, being centred as mostly sexual, yet friendly kind of relationship, it would be rather difficult to define its nature, and conventionalists might call this inappropriate and certainly, unadvised.
If all of the above is exactly what this chart-topping, bestselling book want to tell us, I would hardly give it a go. But now, on the second ride, I feel like there is something prominent enough for it to enter that position. It is not my Rooney favourite, obviously, but there is resonance of the relationship itself, happy mixing with unhappy moments, silent treatment and negligence with fervid conversations, misunderstanding with understanding, replaceability with irreplaceablility... This obfuscating sort of relationship is nothing abnormal or too fictional to get personal. Rather, I would think this is a perfect rendition of the modern definition of relationships.
So Normal People, is perfectly normal.