normal people: a book for people who are not normal

i want to be marianne when i grow up she's so cool (minus the heartbreak)

normal people by sally rooney is a book about two young adults, connell waldron and marianne sheridan, weaving in and out of each others’ lives, and the ways in which love for and from another person can change you. this is one of the quintessential sad girl books recommended all over tiktok, and in my opinion, it’s worth the hype. i found rooney’s characters to be complex and compelling, and her prose to be direct, with pointed observations and descriptions. if you are looking for a medium-paced contemporary romance read that is highly reflective, personal, and depressing, this book is for you.

onto the spoiler part :) stop reading if you haven’t read the book!!

to begin…

this book is easy to get annoyed with. the characters often behave in frustrating and uncommunicative ways, leaving the reader pissed off that they won’t just fuckING TALK TO EACH OTHER. still, the characters of normal people are real - at the end of the day, they act in the stupid, idiotic ways that real people do.

the title of the book is a nod to a statement connell makes, describing his relationship with his then girlfriend helen:

“Helen has given Connell a new way to live. It's as if an impossibly heavy lid has been lifted off his emotional life and suddenly he can breathe fresh air. It is physically possible to type and send a message reading: […] Of course if someone saw the messages he would be embarrassed, but he knows now that this is a normal kind of embarrassment, […] When she touches him spontaneously, applying a little pressure to his arm, or even reaching to brush a piece of lint off his collar, he feels a rush of pride, and hopes that people are watching them.”

connell’s relationship with helen was not based on mutual love and care for each other, but rather on the way she made him feel. the passage above repeats “he” and “him” to emphasize how to connell, the relationship was centered around what happened to him, rather than the both of them. helen made connell feel normal, feel like he was like all other normal people, when in fact he was not. his relationship with marianne was not normal, it was patently different:

“Being alone with her is like opening a door away from normal life and closing it behind him. He's not frightened of her, actually she's a pretty relaxed person, but he fears being around her, because of the confusing way he finds himself behaving, the things he says that he would never ordinarily say.”

this candidness of speech that connell and marianne exercise with one another is the core testament of the novel: absolute honesty and openness as a transformative experience. there are no boundaries between them, and therefore they are boundless. the lack of quotation marks throughout the book symbolizes how marianne and connell converse with each other: there is no separation between thought and statement, and the flow of what they say is uninterrupted.

and yet, is it true that there is something so different, so un-normal about these characters and their relationship to each other? i would posit that an aspect of the elegance of normal people is that it does in fact, contrary to the belief of the characters in it, portray normal people. the love, the passion, the rejection, the miscommunication, the yearning, are all real. the beauty of sally rooney’s writing is the way she can so effectively bring characters and emotions to life in a realistic way, and imbue mundane interactions with layers of meaning hidden under the surface. additionally, rooney portrays flawed characters who struggle with things her readers understand - connell, for example, falls into a deep depression for a period of the book, a segment which i found raw and relatable (especially when paul mescal played it so beautifully).

in response to this, one of the major criticisms of the novel is the fact that at a surface level, it is a bare-bones story, lacking much on-page interaction. this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of normal people. most of the heavy lifting of the book occurs inside the characters’ heads, and in turn, the 2020 tv adaptation had to adapt in order to accommodate this story-telling style.

so what’s the big idea?

normal people, fundamentally, is a novel about how people can change each other; how love and relationships can alter the very fabric of who you are as a person. marianne and connell both begin the book with glaring ‘problems’: marianne has been abused by her father & brother and neglected by her mother and because of that is a flighty and escapist person. she prefers to run from her problems, and doesn’t feel comfortable in her present state, living in a perpetual state of uneasiness. she believes she is not normal and unlovable, and therefore rejects normality and love. connell, on the other hand, is too comfortable where he is. he is afraid to speak out, afraid to be different, and afraid to be truly seen by others.

throughout the book, the two change each other’s perspective on life and themselves. by the end of the story, connell and marianne are vastly different from who they were in school. the final scene of the book, a devastating ending for anyone who wanted the two to end up together (and if you didn’t want them to, then… wtf), represents the changes they’ve both undergone. connell is ready to open up and to pursue what he is passionate about. moving to new york is a risk, and he is willing to take it. marianne, on the contrary, is finally content. she expresses that she is finally okay with herself and her life - even happy with it. she doesn’t need connell by her side to reassure and protect her anymore, and he doesn’t need her love to make him feel normal. they both give to each other, and the two end up much better off because of their relationship. as marianne puts it in the final scene of the show: “we have done so much good for one another.” many find the end of normal people to be frustrating and unfulfilling, but i think it is quite the opposite. both the characters reach a healthy point in their lives and acknowledge the good they have done for each other and the fact that they love each other and probably always will, but this doesn’t mean they must stay together forever.

class

in addition to being a romance, normal people is also a story about class. marianne comes from a rich family, while connell is the son of the woman who cleans for marianne’s mother. the disparity between their socioeconomic statuses is a twist on the usual ‘popular boy/loser girl’ trope (how very breakfast club-esque), seeing as within the confines of high school, connell is the one who holds the power, in the form of social currency, while in the real world, marianne is the one in the position of privilege. when they go to college, marianne finds her financially well-off peers, while connell struggles to make friends with the people in his lectures. he describes his classes as such:

“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. […] all books were ultimately marketed as status symbols […] Literature in the way it appeared at these public readings had no potential as a form of resistance to anything.”

in ‘real life,’ connell’s social power means nothing and his financial status means everything.

how family shapes you

another major theme the book addresses is the role of the family in identity formation. both of the main characters’ families play essential roles in making them who they are. marianne, who was raised in a repressive and abusive household, grows up to doubt herself and to continue to allow others to step all over her. she even expresses how open she would be to doing anything connell wanted from her, even if it hurt her: “she would have lain on the ground and let him walk over her body if he wanted.” conversely, connell was raised by a loving mother, yet her position as a semi-outcast in carricklea as a result of her teen pregnancy and ‘bad’ family leave connell with a special awareness of the power of social admittance and ostracization.

the show

i really loved the show. when i finished reading the book i immediately went and started watching the bbc show, and then finished it and immediately read the book again. i appreciated nearly everything about the execution of normal people on-screen, with a few caveats. the tv show did an almost perfect job of presenting the characters as multifaceted individuals, except for one aspect of marianne. part of her character in the book is her deep care for political and social issues around the world - at one point someone even doubts her sentiments, but connell emphasizes that she does actually care. in the show, her semi-radical political positions are omitted, flattening her character a bit.

in a similar vein, the show generally tended to minimize the grit of the story. small details were changed, leading to a more polished and palatable cast of characters. it felt like the tv show wanted viewers to find the characters likable, while the book did not care.

criticism

the most compelling criticism i have read of normal people deals with a seemingly small aspect of the writing, that being rooney’s emphasis on thinness. this article, by finn mcredmond, details how rooney tends to equate being skinny with being artistic and interesting. does this devalue the story? is it a moral failing on sally rooney’s end?

the end

if you actually read all of this, then wow i’m shocked. what did you think of the book? do you disagree with anything i said? would love to hear thoughts from you - my imaginary audience!

thanks for reading <3