Does Sally Rooney's "Normal People" Live Up to the Hype?
SPOILER WARNING: this is not a spoiler free review, I will be talking about the plot in detail.
Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel, Normal People, is a polarising book. Whenever I see people talk about it, they either describe it as the best book they’ve ever read and a literary masterpiece, or they describe it as one of the worst books they’ve ever read and completely overhyped and overrated. In my review of it, I’d like to provide a healthy middle.
Sally Rooney is an Irish author who currently has three books under her belt, Conversations With Friends, Beautiful World, Where Are You, and of course, Normal People, with her fourth novel coming out later this year. Her work has blown up in popularity over the last few years through the help of BookTok, and she’s even had two of her three books be adapted into tv shows. Normal People is her second novel, and many readers consider it to be her best.
Normal People isn’t usually the type of book I’d gravitate towards, as I’m not a huge contemporary romance reader, but when a book blows up in popularity as much as this one has, I can’t help but be compelled to see if it really lives up to the hype. To put it simply: I did enjoy this book, but I didn’t connect with it as fiercely as so many others have. There are aspects that I like, but there are also many aspects that I don’t like.
The two biggest complaints this book seems to receive are, 1: there’s basically no plot, and 2: all of the characters are insufferable. Both points are valid. Normal People doesn’t follow a typical beginning, middle, end story structure. The story is instead centred around the rocky yet layered relationship between Connell and Marianne. You read as they go from strangers, to lovers, to exes, to friends, to lovers, to friends, and so on and so on. You’ll quickly discover they have a very on again/off again relationship. They spend the story struggling to find where they fit in each other’s lives, while simultaneously trying to find where they fit in the world. That’s the plot essentially. It’s not an action-packed, fast-paced plot; it’s a slow-paced story told across the span of four years of two kids trying to figure out life, love, and everything in-between. Because of its slow-paced nature, I did admittedly find it a bit tedious to read at times, and would sometimes go days without picking it up. But I also understand this is a novel that is supposed to represent the mundanity of everyday life.
As for the second complaint, yes, pretty much all of the characters are unlikeable. Connell’s high school friends, Marianne’s family, Peggy, Jamie, Lukas, even Connell and Marianne - they all suck. But that’s the point. I feel like Rooney intentionally made all of the characters a bit unlikeable because, in a way, that makes them more realistic. Most people in real life suck a little bit too. And haven’t we all interacted with a Peggy or a Jamie in our lives at some point and found them to be just as insufferable in real life as they are on the page?
Personally, I found Connell to be unlikeable in the first half of the book, and Marianne to be unlikeable in the second half. I felt no love whatsoever for Connell as he treated Marianne like a secret he was ashamed of in their high school years, and him asking Rachel to the Debs when he was dating Marianne only deepened my dislike for him. Marianne, on the other hand, was the one I sympathised with. She was a loner who was bullied and outcast by her peers, of course I felt bad for her.
But once they got to college, the roles switched. Marianne’s new-found snobbish, pretentious nature seriously irked me. It especially bothered me how oblivious she was to her own privilege as someone who came from a wealthy family. Like when she applies for and wins the scholarship not because she needs the money, but because it’ll improve her social status and make her more respectable. She then gets annoyed at Connell when he points this out. This is one interesting aspect of Marianne and Connell’s dynamic, in that they come from polar opposite backgrounds. Connell was raised by a loving family but grew up poor, while Marianne was raised by an abusive family but grew up rich. These are the only aspects they can’t understand about each other’s worlds. Connell can’t grasp why Marianne doesn’t like her family, and Marianne can’t grasp Connell’s financial issues.
Despite hating Connell in the first half, I sympathised with him in the second half as he struggled with depression, anxiety, and feeling judged by his peers’ for not being as wealthy as them. Even Marianne eventually redeems herself towards the end of the book, and I reverted back to feeling bad for her as she struggled to break free of her masochistic habit of getting stuck in relationships with abusive men. As unlikeable as both her and Connell can be at times, they each have their own emotional baggage and traumas that makes the reader pity them. To be perfectly honest, the only character who isn’t unlikeable is Connell’s mother, Lorraine. She’s a real one.
Connell and Marianne’s relationship is the core and backbone of this story. While I see why one might like them together, I actually found them, as a couple, to be rather toxic. Their relationship was so unstable with how much they chopped and changed between lovers and friends. Marianne would always get jealous whenever Connell showed any attention towards another woman, and on multiple occasions, their relationship fell apart because of a simple miscommunication that could’ve been easily fixed. Not to mention that the entirety of their relationship was tinged with an unhealthy codependency. I much preferred them as friends in comparison to when they were together. Either way, their connection, whether romantic or platonic, is undeniably interesting and complex.
Marianne and Connell are drawn to each other like magnets, because they’re both different from everyone else around them; they’re both different from “normal” people. They both feel like outsiders wherever they go except when they’re together. It’s only when they’re together that either of them feel a sense of belonging. They understand each other in a way no one else has ever been able to understand them. It’s even described at times throughout the book that they can almost read each other’s minds; that’s how deep their connection goes. Which makes it all the more impactful that in the end, they decide to let each other go.
The ending is an aspect of the story that is often debated. I didn’t love the ending, but not for the reasons you might think. I don’t mind the fact that Connell and Marianne decide to go their separate ways, in fact, I think that was the better narrative decision and only makes the story more meaningful, but I don’t like that Marianne doesn’t get an ending. We know what will happen to Connell. He’ll move to New York, and become an established writer. But we are given no insight into what becomes of Marianne. Will she stay in Dublin forever? What career will she pursue? Will she learn to take more control over her life?
Truthfully, the ending felt rushed, which is odd as the book is, for the most part, slow-paced. Because the story doesn’t really wrap-up in any way, it doesn’t feel like it has a proper conclusion; the book just ends. I hate when novels do that, because it’s always unsatisfying to read. The ending of any book is so important, because that’s what cements the reader’s lasting impression. There’s nothing that irks me more than when the ending of a book feels rushed or like the story wasn’t properly brought to a conclusion.
Rooney’s writing style isn’t particularly flowery or over-sophisticated, which in some ways is a good thing. But at times, she would put too much focus on unnecessarily describing actions; like going into detail about Marianne making a cup of tea or opening a bottle of wine. Those aren’t things we need to know as a reader. I feel the need to address Rooney’s decision not to include quotation marks. Before this year, a book that didn’t have quotation marks would’ve been an absurd concept to me, but funnily enough, I’ve read two books this year that are completely devoid of quotation marks. Personally, I don’t like it. I found the lack of them to be distracting. At first, I really struggled with not having quotation marks, but the further I read, the more I adjusted. But I still prefer to have them in the books I read.
To conclude my thoughts on this book, it is a good window into the tumultuous yet formative time period that is your early 20s. Marianne and Connell, as two 20-somethings, stumble their way through life together, trying to figure out what kind of people they want to be, and what they are to each other, before ultimately deciding they won’t be able to truly grow and flourish as people unless they do it separately. There is something poetic about that. I have a feeling if I was 25 and read this book, I would be able to connect to it more easily. But alas, I’m only 19. Maybe if I read this book again in a few more years, I’ll be able to really appreciate it for all that it is.