#bookreview : Normal People by Sally Rooney
This novel is centered around the lives of Connell and Marianne , two teenagers who live in the same town and who are significantly different from each other. At school, Marianne is always alone and appears to be odd and rebellious at times while Connell is liked by everyone and has a certain amount of popularity. They usually meet after school when Connell goes to Marianne’s house to pick up his mom who works there and one day the two strike up an awkward conversation that will literally change them for real through the upcoming years.
We will see their relationship untangle throughout the years and learn a lot about the senses of admiration, friendship and love .
I loved how raw the interactions between the two of them is . I loved how they can be easily true to one another and reveal who they really are to each other. Exposing their weaknesses and their vulnerabilities , their soft trays and their darkest thoughts all at once . Every scene in which they are together has an enchanting taste. The way they are so close but yet so distant at the same time. Their enlightening conversations and how deep they are into their insecure feelings.
All the above was perfectly captivated by the author and her smoothly flowing writing style but it did feel kind of excessively dramatic towards the second half of the book . The lack of communication is the central cause of their many breakups. As self absorbed teenagers who constantly deal with stress and anxiety , you’d quiet understand their childish behaviors and quirky antics toward each other but as they move to college and the dynamics of the relationship change, their actions start to weight in as immature and inexplicable most of the time.
Marianne becomes the popular college girl who everyone is drawn to like a moth to a flame and Connell is now the loner and thr one with no friends and he starts to struggle with that immensely.
There’s this absurd YA touch that screw up the plot in a big way but the depth of the characters and the subtlety of the author make up for it eventually.
Rooney goes on to bring us a full figure on their intertwined lives with meticulous insight.
The attempt to talk about sensitive topics like abuse and depression is not a triumphant success, nor a disastrous failure.
Victims of abuse try to escape from it with a tendency to avoid having such relationships what so ever . And here it doesn’t make sense that such a brilliantly educated and self aware character is still looking for a submissive relation without seeking professional help . This subplot is delusional at best and illogical too .
The character who suffers from depression does go to therapy and does look for a way out but doesn’t commit to work on himself, and fails at communicating his true emotions to the other which also kind of absurd in its own way.
In the end I gave it five stars because I was absorbed by it entirely but after finishing up the tv adaptation and thinking about how everything unraveled pragmatically, I think I’ll stick up with my first rating because it did touch me on a ver personal level . It heartbreakingly surprised me as romance in itself is not my cup of tea and this novel moved me and ignited my passion for the entire genre . It left its mark on me and had a meaningful impact on my own life .
Yes , it’s not a perfect tale , but at the end of the day no book is perfect anyway and I would actually recommend it to my fellow book lovers