Normal People

Marianne, spending an academic year abroad in Lund, Sweden, reads emails from Connell and Joanna. They are both curious about her new Swedish boyfriend, Lukas, who takes artistic photographs of her. 

Marianne then goes to Lukas’s apartment. Their relationship includes violent sexual games, as did her relationship with Jamie. Apart from her involvement with Lukas, Marianne feels isolated in Sweden. She has a sense of “muffled” unreality and worthlessness, brought on by the alien culture and language and by the draining effects of a toxic relationship. She has also been shunned by most of her Trinity social group—apart from Joanna—after she broke up with Jamie the previous summer. 

In Lukas’s apartment, Marianne readies herself to be photographed, taking off her clothes. Though she complies at first, she balks when Lukas introduces bondage into their photographs. When he tells her that he loves her, she rips off the restraints and leaves: “Could he really do the gruesome things he does to her and believe at the same time that he’s acting out of love?” (199).

Connell is in a campus mental health facility, filling out a questionnaire. He has been sent there by Niall. He feels isolated by his scholarship and has been having increasingly morbid and despairing thoughts.