complicated feelings towards Normal People by Sally Rooney
Literary Fiction, 2018
Overall Rating: ★★★★
"Her eyes fill up with tears again and she closes them. Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she's aware of this now, while it's happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life."
Normal People by Sally Rooney is a story about two deeply complicated and misunderstood people which leaves the reader, for better or for worse, feeling about as frustrated and confused as I'd imagine being in their relationship would be. Despite boasting a contentious ending which if I'd been reading the book physically would have resulted in me chucking it violently across the room, I actually really enjoyed (or rather irreversibly invested myself in) the first two acts of this book. As for the arc of Connell and Marianne's relationship, what initially feels so grounded and real with their avoidable miscommunications and pent-up guilt eventually becomes tiresome and arbitrary, like Rooney is leading us on a long and excruciating journey to nowhere for no reason. Given that I still rated the book four stars, that's clearly a critique I'm willing to forgo for the stunning middle portion of the novel, which is so painfully beautiful and true to feelings of self-doubt, guilt, and social isolation. Rooney is incredibly gifted with putting to words the complexity and significant mundanity of relationships, though the lackluster finish to Normal People makes me question whether this emotionally taxing race was worth it.
But that isn't all there is to it. I didn't just like the book and dislike the ending. I was deeply affected by the characters of the novel and their relationships, by everything said and unsaid, so much so that I felt physical reactions to the goings-on of the book as I was reading it. I think Rooney's ability to get me to care so deeply for her characters felt at once like a gift and a betrayal, as I wanted nothing more than to feel closure by the end of my time with them and felt slighted by their falling back into old habits (frustrating arguments over nothing where nothing gets accomplished) before being cut off from their world.
"Her gaze unsettles him like it used to, like looking into a mirror, seeing something that has no secrets from you."
Rooney's understanding of the psychology of her characters is simultaneously admirable and overbearing, as the part of me that yearns for a happy ending feels spat on by the rational part of my brain that knows the characters of the novel would not have it in themselves to get better as long as they are together. But having experienced so much of what Connell and Marianne experienced myself, and having come out the other side, it feels strange leaving the novel with the sense that the kind of problems the characters deal with in the novel are inescapable due to their nature.
This depiction of a dependent and toxic relationship is realistic and deeply affecting, which was a shock to me, as I was going into this novel expecting a romance. I'm not sure why Normal People continues to be marketed that way years after its release (the TV show may have something to do with it, but I wouldn't know) given that the relationship depicted in the novel is far from romantic. The unsatisfying ending of the novel hammers that point down, as readers expecting a romance will spend their entire reading experience waiting for closure only to be left with more questions than answers. That was certainly part of my frustration with the ending. But I don't think it's right to base my opinion of the novel on whether the relationship works out in the end (spoiler: it doesn't, or at least it isn't sustainable), so my four-star rating comes from an understanding that I shouldn't have been reading this like a romance novel because the romance of Connell and Marianne was never what it was intending to capture.
Instead, I am stunned by its true-to-life depictions of new and old friendships, complicated sibling dynamics, the past haunting the present, and a number of other nuanced themes. I often found myself planted in the shoes of Connell and Marianne, feeling very deeply for them and the things they thought of themselves. Though I have some reservations about the repetitiveness of the novel's third act, I'm glad I read it. Normal People is a reminder that not every book is an easy read (nor should they be) and that not every rating of a book should be based on whether I "liked" it or not, but rather how much it made me think. After a long day of reading, this book gave me a hell of a lot to chew on.
"Lately he's consumed by a sense that he is in fact two separate people, and soon he will have to choose which person to be on a full-time basis, and leave the other person behind."