One of the first books I’ve read this year and our book club pick for January was Normal People by Sally Rooney!
Published in 2018 by Faber & Faber, the novel became a best-seller rather quickly. To this day, Normal People is one of the most popular books by the Irish author Sally Rooney. I have to admit I didn’t really know what to expect from this read, especially with the cover being slightly unusual (at least for me). Both me and Angela, my best friend, really wanted to watch the show that is based on this book so we thought the winter time was the perfect time for something a bit more nostalgic.
In retrospective, I don’t know if this was the best decision, haha! And I’m only saying this because Normal People is quite a depressing sad story that maybe, just maybe, was not great for the start of a new year. 😁
I personally didn’t vibe a lot with the writing style, but this is purely just a personal preference. The book is focused very much on character development through intimate, internal thoughts and dialogue, often presented without quotation marks which is what made the reading of this book a bit tense for me. On the other hand, I think the writing style helped a lot with keeping the atmosphere of the story very heavy, suffocating and sad. This will probably be one of the most sad romance novels I will ever read.
Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.
Normal People follows the friendship and relationship between Marianne and Connel, who attend the same school and later on the same university. Marianne comes from a very wealthy family and Connel is the total opposite, with his mother being a housekeeper for Marianne’s family. I think the book was appreciated a lot for certain themes, especially class division and socioeconomic status boundaries, but to me this was more about communication. Neither Marianne nor Connel were able to talk fully open about their feelings either for each other or their feelings overall – about school, friends, or day to day life which was perpetuated and influenced by their life situations and dynamics with other people.
The BBC Three adaptation of Normal People was released in 2020, around a month after the world went into the first Covid-19 lockdown. Normal People was a huge hit, being nominated for multiple Emmy awards including Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. The 12-part limited series stars Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, both of whom have seen an incredible raise in fame and success since the release of the show. And I can totally understand why. Both actors do a tremendous job playing Connel and Marianne, respectively. Every single scene shows their remarkable talent and dediction, and every single scene feels natural, raw. You can feel that the author of the book was deeply involved in developing the series, Sally Rooney being one of the screenwriters, alongside Alice Birch and Mark O’Rowe.
It’s funny the decisions you make because you like someone, he says, and then your whole life is different. I think we’re at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions.
Trailer:
Normal People is available on BBC iPlayer in the UK.
