Normal People
Ratings1,025
Average rating3.6
maaaaaybe 2.5
I really thought i'd like it a lot more but it was a chore to finish honestly. rooney's writing, while it added to the plot in conversations with friends, here it does nothing. and definitely not enough to make the book enjoyable. In fact, I think it made it less enjoyable.
for a character driven story, the characters lacked personality. They were very bland and static. They felt very “fake”, which made me feel very distant from them. I struggled to connect with them emotionally.
The inner conflicts that they're supposedly struggling with came across as whiny sometimes.
Things like eating disorders and domestic abuse were kind of just thrown in there and not well explored, or rather were not handled properly.
The ending was really abrupt and came out of nowhere.
“Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.”
Conell wished he knew how other people conducted their private lives, so that he could copy from example
Marianne wonders what it would be like to belong here, to walk down the street greeting people amd smiling. To feel that life was happening here, in this place, and not somewhere else far away
Who were you? She thinks, now that theres no one left to answer the question.
“It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”
Connell is silent again. He leans down and kisses her on the forehead. I would never hurt you, okay? he says. Never. She nods and says nothing. You make me really happy, he says. His hand moves over her hair and he adds: I love you. I'm not just saying that, I really do. Her eyes fill up with tears again and she closes them. Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she's aware of this now, while it's happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed, she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.
2.5/5
I did really enjoy this book but I feel like it's way overhyped. It is a good read overall though.
Honestly I just did not like this. Two stars because I didn't absolutely loathe it and read the entire thing. To be up front, this book is not about what I thought it was about and now I just think it's a bit funny. I brought this to the beach because I thought it would be cute and upbeat and boy was I wrong.
I absolutely resented the fact that there were no quotation marks. Petty, I know, but I was confused at far too many points in this book because of the lack of quotation marks. I also just did not understand the rationale behind it, so if someone would like to enlighten me to the purpose behind them, it would be much appreciated.
At the end of the day, Connell and Marianne were boring and pretentious. I didn't particularly care for them or any of the characters and it made it difficult to enjoy this book.
There was so much hype about this book and for the life of me I can't understand why. It was fine, I can see why some people would like it, but I didn't feel that it was particularly ground-breaking or remarkable.
I really really loved this book. I related to this story in many ways and it made me feel so incredibly connected to the characters like I was a part of their brain. I almost ran out of sticky notes because there are so many brilliant quotes in there. I think I don't know enough words to describe how incredible this book is. I just urge you to read it.
It felt like i'm reading a journal entry of both Connel and Marianne. It was very...strange read. I didnt get the ending, in fact i didnt like it and i felt like i wasted my entire day.
I very much understood marianne's pain when connel says that he is inlove with helen. I felt like sobbing with her, but i also feel like the story implies that whole phrase “right person wrong time” and it feels very frustrating that this is the case with them every single time. Like for once let them be content consistently without one having to up and leave.
i thought it was nice and interesting but mostly funny to think about and at some points tedious. one of my brothers is named Conal so i was like “hehe” until the book got horny :/ definitely did not expect the sexual violence and it felt really bad to think about and i suppose i still don't feel so well a month out from reading it
This book is beautiful and at times painfully relatable.
The audiobook read by Aoife McMahon was one of the best audiobooks I've ever listened to. She did an amazing job of depicting each character with subtly differences in voice, and reading so smoothly you are never taken out of the story.
I usually love character studies but there wasn't much character to study. Or maybe not much studying? So matter of fact and without emotion, it made it hard for me to care too much. Disappointed.
“what they have now they can never have back again. but 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. they've done a lot of good for each other. really, she thinks, really. people can really change one another.”
honestly i don't think i'll ever recover from this, i'm devastated. this book was so emotionally intense. it's almost indescribable how i felt reading this book. i was so invested in marianne and connell's relationship that sometimes i had to remind myself that they were fictional characters.
marianne and connell are so well-written that it's easy to relate to them both and impossible to prefer one over another. sally rooney's writing is very simple yet she's a genius at writing complex characters, which is the best quality a writer can have. she made marianne and connell feel real. i first wanted to rate this book 4 stars but then i decided that it fully deserves 5 stars for the reasons i mentioned and also because it's probably one of the best books i've ever read.
I enjoyed this story, which rang true to life. The dialogue felt real and lived. I did grow impatient with the on again - off again frustrated love affair, so I skimmed the last third to a good (enough) ending.
This book has my heart. The whole thing feels like the best and worst nostalgia and I absolutely loved it.
Oh! A love story, ok.
Three months later: ok, this Connell guy seems to be a fuckboy.
Two months later: ok, Connell is an idiot.
Six weeks later: Connell is still an idiot
One year later: Connell? What a moron.
Two weeks later: oh, Marianne is pretty f***ed up too.
Twelve days later: Connell is still pretty dumb for someone who is supposed to be a genius. Marianne is still a mess.
...
Four years later: Connell is still a stupid man and Marianne is still a mess, but a little better. All in all, they are indeed pretty normal people.
While I liked the book, I didn't enjoy the central relationship. I was so happy with that ambiguous end. I thought: This is a healthy move, Marianne; you absolutely did the right thing.
Rooney does a good job of highlighting the harm we do to ourselves, and other people when we depend on others for validation and acceptance. So I think it is so interesting that even in the final version of their relationship, Marianne seems so dependent on Connell. There's a particular passage I can't get out of my head:
She was laughing then, and her face was red. She was in his power, he had chosen to redeem her, she was redeemed. It was so unlike him to behave that way in public that he must have been doing it on purpose, to please her. How strange to feel herself so completely under the control of another person, but also how ordinary. No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not. She knows he loves her, she doesn't wonder about that anymore.
Rooney critiques a need for social acceptance to such a large degree in this novel, that it seems an odd choice to have Marianne and Connell this dependent on each other. Even in the end, they haven't necessarily found a middle ground. In this particular passage it reads (to me anyway), that Marianne is accepting that she and Connel are co-dependent and that is ok. I think that an over-reliance on social acceptance and an overreliance on one person, are both perversions of what could otherwise be healthy relationships between ourselves and the people around us. So it is an interesting choice Rooney makes to have Marianne ‘accept' her codependent relationship, getting to the end of her book. To me, it reads as an indication that Marianne and Connell have not yet managed to be independent while maintaining healthy relationships. There's an all or nothing quality to their relationship that is present even at the end, which is why I think the book absolutely had to end the way it did.
In the book, we got to see Connell get therapy for his anxiety and depression, but we never got to see Marianne work through her own trauma and abuse. I think this may in part contribute to the state of their relationship. Considering Connell himself had contributed to her feelings of unworthiness, I couldn't believe in the health of their connection. Even in the last chapter. So I was overjoyed when the book ended with their separation. I feel perhaps they could reconnect later when they are healthier more mature versions of themselves and have a better relationship. For now, I was happy that this iteration of their relationship was dying.
The book made me feel many things, it is rare that I inhabit characters as fully as I inhabited Connell and Marianne. In fact, I'm absolutely certain that my strong feelings about this book have made this review an incoherent mess but
3'5/5⭐
This is one of the times when the series is much better than the book.
One sentence synopsis... A critique of the dysfunctional power dynamics of relationships under capitalism disguised as a will-they-won't-they love story between two millennial Irish intellectuals. .
Read it if you liked... ‘One Day' by Dave Nicholls (the book, not the movie... the movie was a disaster, Anne Hathaway's accent is a disgrace, it's painful to watch). .
Dream casting... turns out Hulu is already all over this casting Daisy Edgar-Jones as bookish and strange Marianne and Paul Mescal as popular jock Connell.
Кажется, мне уже давно пора понять, что если на обложке очередной отзыв от какой-нибудь «New York Times» а-ля «ИТА ШИДЕВР, НОВАЯ КЛАССЕКА», то такую книгу можно даже не открывать. Тем более если на задней стороне обложки отзывы от критиков «Meduza» (да-да, очень важное мнение Антона Долина я стараюсь обходить стороной. Хотя Юзефович мне кажется толковой).
Не знаю, о какой новой классике все толкуют. Какую любовь там все увидели, я тоже не могу понять. Если авторка хотела показать, до чего ж сложны ее герои как личности, она потерпела фиаско. Персонажи совершено плоские, как лист картона. К ним не испытываешь ни сочувствия, ни интереса. На протяжении всей книги происходит НИЧЕГО. Нет, бывают книги, в которых, казалось бы, не происходит ничего, но на деле происходит многое. Где видны личности персонажей, а не говорящие друг с другом головы. Эта книга не из их числа.
Nem gosto de livros tipo “um dia”, mas me envolvi seriamente com Marianne e Connell e tanta angústia e olhar para dentro.
The main character's mom is the single likeable character in this book, and I lost count of how many times I sighed with frustration. Perhaps worse, there isn't a single quotation mark.