‘Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell.’

I love it when the first line of a book is meaningful and says something about the story to unfold. Normal People’s first line is not just meaningful. It tells it all. This very normal looking sentence somehow holds the whole essence of the book. The catch is, you won’t know until you have read the whole thing. But that isn’t difficult. This book has an urgency about it that might keep you up until the wee small hours of the morning. I found myself wanting to eat the book, inhale it, breathe it, absorb it. I really had to pace myself to actually get all the amazing nuances of Rooney’s writing style.

Okay, let’s start at the beginning.

The name of the book – Normal People – probably rings a bell. It has been adapted as a BBC 3 series and was a massive lockdown hit. In fact, it was hailed as the most watched BBC 3 show ever. The show launched end of April and by early May was requested over 16 million times, beating Killing Eve which only hit 8 million requests at its launch. Well, okay, there wasn’t much else to do this spring, with everything being shut down. But still, the Irish drama about something as normal as first love has clearly captivated British audiences.

The series is based on Sally Rooney’s second novel of the same name, which made the long list of the Man Booker Prize and has won multiple awards in Ireland and the UK. Normal People’s story line is pretty simple: Marianne, an outsider in her senior year at secondary school starts sleeping with Connell, who tries to keep his space in a popular clique. Later, roles are reversed when both attend Trinity College in Dublin, where Marianne feels more at home while Connell doesn’t seem to fit in. While the book is about the intensity of first love, it is about much more than that. While reading it, I often stopped to wonder what makes this story so fascinating, considering that its subject matter is so … , well, ordinary. One reason is that the novel packs a lot else in. It tackles topics as heavy as bullying, depression, domestic abuse, suicide, class and a little BDSM for good measure. But what Rooney really excels in is in conveying the intimate connection felt between Marianne and Connell and the difficulty they face in honouring that connection, doing justice to it, acknowledging it, owning it. The novel is written from the third person perspective, alternating between the two characters. Although Rooney’s profile of Marianne is more intricate and knowing than that of Connell, her lucid style creates an immediacy that allows us to see the world through the eyes of both characters.  

Rooney’s writing style is sparse, devoid of any unnecessary frills. It cuts right through with crystal clear descriptions of the characters’ behaviours, always stemming away from the authenticity of their actual feelings. I found myself wanting to shout at the page, shake the characters and tell them to grow up and own up. The same way the first part and second part mirror each other, the theme of love is echoed by another major theme: pain – physical and mental. Rooney asks profound questions here. What is worse: The pain of social rejection or the pain of physical violence? And what is love? The thing you feel when you are with someone or the things you do to acknowledge that feeling?

There are some things I found problematic. It’s a very white book and it’s heteronormative at its core. Don’t look for diverse experiences here; you won’t find them. Later in the book, there are some passages that illustrate one character’s deteriorating mental health but without resolving it (I won’t go into that here - spoilers). This tainted the book a little for me, but in its immediacy and lucidity it remains an outstanding novel and one of my absolute favourites. If you feel the same enthusiasm for Rooney’s writing, also check out her debut novel Conversations with Friends. This was published in 2017 and is about a menage a quatre between two friends and a married couple. It swept critics off their feet and won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Sally Rooney certainly packed a lot into her twenties: She is only twenty-seven! What she seems to be able to capture so eloquently is the sensibility and fragility of modern relationships which, if not new, are more palpable now than they ever were. Happy reading!