Next up in the new year was Louise Penny’s latest Gamache novel (A Better Man), followed by The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott, which I couldn’t get into and didn’t finish. (To me, it just felt like an episode of The Americans that I paused in the middle of and never really wanted to go back and finish. But I know many loved it!) So after that bumpy start, I picked up Sally Rooney’s Normal People, one of 2019’s buzziest books of the year. Longlisted for the Man Booker and nominated for several other awards, it got my reading back on track.
Normal People traces the relationship of two Irish teenagers, Marianne and Connell, from their first relationship in high school through college. One might describe their romantic relationship as on-again, off-again, but that feels too cute and pat for what exists between them. They are two bodies inextricably drawn to each other despite periods of separation and attempts at platonic friendship. The novel follows them as they grow up, trying to find themselves and their places in the world while constantly redefining their place with the other.
Rooney is a sparkling writer. With her spare yet vivid prose, she gives voice to the smallest quirks, expressions, and feeling of human experience and relationship unlike any other writer I’ve read. Her characters are so much more than they appear. At first, it seems like a typical star-crossed lovers situation. Marianne is from a wealthy though cold (and sometimes abusive) family, while Connell lives with his loving single mom, a cleaning woman who works for Marianne’s family. Connell is supposed to be very good, full stop, but Rooney gets inside his head, and we the readers understand even his most heelish decisions. His experience with depression is muted, fuzzy, and crystal clear all at the same time. Marianne, on the other hand, believes herself to be very bad, and while I was never fully convinced of her total goodness, her ferocity of spirit is ever-present, and I understood her choices, feelings, and catharsis at the end. Rooney also deftly navigates the shifting perspectives between Connell and Marianne throughout the book. I preferred reading Connell; Marianne’s voice has a brittleness to it that put me on edge a bit, but that is a testiment to her character as created by Rooney rather than a flaw.
Rooney’s examination of human expression extends to her descriptions of place, and the whole of Dublin comes alive in the book. I’ve only been into Dublin once, but Rooney’s imagery captured everything from the city and Trinity College to the suburbs exactly as I remember it. So often when I read about a place where I’ve been, either my memory is faulty or the place is described just differently enough that it seems disconnected from the place I experienced. That’s absolutely not the case here. It may seem cliched, but Dublin is as much a character or at least a defining force on the main characters, and their choices and experiences are very tied to the particulars of class divisions in the city.
Overall, I liked Normal People a lot. I did not love it, though, which surprised me considering how universally praised it was. I can’t quite put my finger on why I didn’t love it the way others did. One thing might be that the catharsis Marianne experiences at the end is so small and quick, you’ll miss it if you’re not watching for it. The subsequent jump in time skips over information and experience that would support the intensity of responses later displayed by several characters. It’s not a huge problem, but it did feel aligned with the care and attention to detail of the rest of the book. However, I think overall, I had a muted response because these are muted people who spend a lot of time in their interior worlds. What Marianne and Connell present to others is a performance of sorts, while what they present to themselves and to each other is real–still quiet and foggy but ultimately hopeful. And that’s how I felt reading it: quiet, foggy, and hopeful. I will say that I was not expecting it to stick with me the way it has. Over the few weeks after finishing, I frequently found my mind drifting back to Connell and Marianne, idly wondering what happens next in their stories. Honestly, Normal People is such a quick read, I actually thought, “Done. I don’t think that will stay with me,” when I finished it. And yet it has. So maybe Rooney is evern more masterful a writer than I realized.