Book Review: Normal People by Sally Rooney

Normal People by Sally Rooney is nothing short of a modern masterpiece, a truly complex and vital story young people and older people alike can learn from and lean into. Normal People is often described as a coming-of-age story that grapples with the struggles of young love and social status. More than anything, I view it as a cautionary tale, revealing the aching consequences of inaction; the weight our passivity plays in fueling our own discontent, whether through the words we choose not to say, the risks we choose not to take, or the honesty we prevent ourselves from living.

Oftentimes in youth, when time feels like an endless resource, scoopable by the bucketload, we let the sun set while unspoken words remain on our tongue, using tomorrow as an excuse to avoid uncomfortable conversations. Rooney cleverly weaves these vital discussions in an approachable young adult tale, using the insecurities often experienced in our younger years as a universal checkpoint to explore identity. 

To briefly summarize without spoiling the plot, Normal People dives into the lives of two Irish teens with wildly polarizing social and economic statuses. Marianne is highly intelligent and comes from a wealthy family, but endures daily torment by her peers. Connell is the child of a single mother who is the housekeeper for Marianne’s family, and is a star athlete on the field and popular all around.

Their decision to start secretly dating, while mutually agreed upon, catalyzes a world of suffering for them both. Connell feels the pressure to hide their relationship so he won’t lose the approval of his schoolmates, while Marianne walks the halls utterly alone, being bullied by the same people Connell considers friends. We follow Connell and Marianne into college, watching as the effects of their miscommunication compounds and wears away at them.  

Rooney represents high school and college as similarly paranoid societies to that of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, where a deviation from social norms is met with condemnation. Students are metaphorically burned at the stake for not upholding the status quo. What made Connell popular in high school no longer works in the college sphere; whereas, Marianne, after going her whole life being outcast, is finally liked in a space where academia and niche interests are preferred to conventional beauty and brawn. Despite being deemed popular in different phases of their lives, both spaces are tainted either by arbitrary, nonsensical rules or pretension. 

Ultimately, they are better at performing in different capacities. Connell absolves himself of responsibility by hiding behind the shallowness of his jock role, preferring the shield of a herd (his team) instead of exposing his non-belonging by associating with Marianne. While at university, Marianne is capable of fitting in amongst the other well-off and intelligent students, quickly discovering  that they overcompensate with big words and existential philosophy. Rooney offers an interesting commentary regarding these insufferable academics, who while plagued with affluenza, rant about social class injustices, flexing their surface level knowledge of theory and current events, all while vacationing in their family homes in France, Spain, and Italy. They both are discontented in these arenas, unable to make space for the other within the social structures they’ve learned to navigate.

My Takeaways:

What I ultimately took away from this novel was the gravity of being complicit in our own discontent. Insecurity fuels our impulse to masquerade as “normal people,” desiring approval from a community we can never please, and even if we do, feel all the more isolated by. We learn to silence the best parts of ourselves, the weird, the peculiar, the strangeness that makes us beautiful, just to be more palatable for others. But these toxic friend groups of our youth are inherently unsustainable, built on self-policing, their members constantly on edge, trying to identify the ‘imposter among us.’ Growing up requires the reservation of judgment, and the friendships that last are the ones unconcerned with easily definable identity.  

I found myself utterly moved and lost in thought after finishing this novel. You will find a piece of yourself in both Marianne and Connell, as  the outcast and the insider, the rejected and the accepted, the authentic and the pretender.