4 stars.
Sally Rooney's Normal People may be the first book I have ever read that is set in contemporary Ireland. Rooney is Irish herself, and has set all three of her novels in Ireland, but it was interesting to read a novel set in a country I had to this day read nothing about.
If you were to call Normal People a romance, and I'm on the fence about whether to do so, one of the first things one would notice is that it reverse the "normal" dynamic of romantic stories regarding wealth i.e. the man is from a poorer family while the woman is from a wealthier (albeit problematic) family. The thing is that, without any spoilers, it is not entirely a romance, and I think it's premature to frame it as such.
While it was not that unusual, the syntax of Normal People drove me crazy: there were no quotation marks. I don't know if that was merely a stylistic choice, but it made it sometimes difficult for me to determine whether something was dialogue or internal monologue, and who was speaking.
There were some parts of the novel that were melodramatic to the point of being annoying. For example, Rooney writes, "He felt as if he had just jumped off a high precipice and fallen to his death, and he was glad he was dead, he never wanted to be alive again." (57). Other parts were strikingly relatable, such as, "Marianne wonders what it would be like to belong here, to walk down the street greeting people and smiling. To feel that life was happening here, in this place, and not somewhere else far away." (67).
Rooney also made some good observations and metaphors about her subjects; in fact, the book was chock full of them. To cite one example, she writes, "At times he has the sensation that he and Marianne are like figure skaters, improvising their discussions so adeptly and in such perfect synchronization that it surprises them both. She tosses herself gracefully into the air, and each time, without knowing how he's going to do it, he catches her." (100-101).
What I will stress is that this book is not for everyone. Without trying to spoil anything, if you have triggers that tie to family or intimate partner abuse, Normal People is not for you. Also, there are some discussions of more "hard-core" sexual topics, though nothing graphic is ever depicted.
The last thing I will say, and this is the largest component of why I docked a star, is that Normal People is not that plot-driven; it is more a sequence of events. At times it reminded me of impressionist visual art (which I am actually quite fond of): the idea of a quick snapshot of something at one point in time. The book is basically eighteen of them, all narrating the development of a relationship.
Time spent reading: 4 hours, 43 minutes.
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