Normal People

Content Warning: This novel and review contain references to physical abuse. 

Although Sally Rooney published her second novel in 2018, the shadow it casts over contemporary literature and her celebrity continues to grow. Thanks to an Emmy Award-nominated television adaptation that premiered in 2020, Normal People is a literary phenomenon by today’s standards, appealing to casual readers and critics alike. Within a year of its release, The Guardian named the novel one of the best books of the century.

The cultural popularity of Normal People isn’t just a matter of hype. Rooney weaves a compelling tale of two lovers who always seem to fall in love with each other at the wrong time. While this sounds like the formula for a cutesy romance, the novel is much more than that, as it finds a backdrop in the Irish economic downturn of 2008. Rooney’s protagonists are emblematic of the wide social gap that marked Ireland throughout the 2010s. Despite the novel’s social themes, Rooney never demands more from the reader than a basic understanding of everyday class differences. This is where the novel proves both its accessibility and its ingenuity.

Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron are two teenage characters who live in Sligo, a rural county in the northwest of Ireland. Although Connell and Marianne get along with one another, their circumstances divide them. Marianne comes from a wealthy family, which isolates her from her middle-class peers in secondary school. Connell, who is handsome and extremely popular, comes from a lower-middle-class household. His mother, Lorraine, works as a cleaner in Marianne’s house.

Connell finds a confidante in Marianne, allowing her to see the discomfort he feels in his own skin as a popular student. Their friendship blossoms into a secret romance, during which Connell learns that Marianne experiences physical abuse at home. Connell’s naivety and fear of the social dynamics at his school prevent him from acknowledging Marianne in public. When Connell goes so far as to ask another girl out to the school dance, Marianne distances herself from in, believing his feelings for her are insincere.

The novel takes a turn when Connell and Marianne both become students at Trinity College. In Dublin, the protagonists find that they have swapped social positions. Marianne is now immensely popular among her new cosmopolitan friends while Connell struggles to fit into a new urban environment. Marianne yearns to include Connell in her social circle’s activities but finds that her friends look down on him because of his economic status. Suddenly, Marianne finds herself in Connell’s place, unsure if she should present him as her lover. Throughout the rest of the novel, the two reckon with the way their social dynamics interfere with their desire to stay in each other’s lives. This also forces them to confront their demons and redraw the lines of engagement they maintain with each other and with the world at large.

In Normal People, Rooney, who self-identifies as a Marxist, keenly draws an inverse relationship between personal desire and social class. It is crystal clear what is at stake when Connell chooses to prioritize the approval of his secondary school crowd over his relationship with Marianne. The novel draws strength from Rooney’s decision to stretch the impact of Connell’s decision in the long term. By reversing Connell and Marianne’s social positions, Rooney implicitly draws a contrast between rural Sligo and cosmopolitan Dublin. The class divide puts the two protagonists in an ironic position: Now that she is favored and popular, how can Marianne stop herself from making the same choice that Connell did?

Far from being a pitfall, the novel uses this reversal to add to its sharp portrayal of messy adolescent life. Rooney depicts struggles with teen relationships, domestic abuse, depression, and the absence of a parent with sensitivity. Marianne and Connell both have chips on their shoulders, but their shared ability to sympathize with one another despite their material differences is what makes their relationship so compelling to read.

If the novel suffers from anything, it is the ambiguous direction in which Connell and Marianne’s relationship goes. The middle of the novel sees the two lovers engage in other affairs; Rooney portrays most, if not all of them, as toxic or incompatible for one reason or another. This includes Marianne’s relationship with her rich family, who insist on perpetuating the cycle of violence that Marianne experienced growing up. Right away, the resolution is glaringly obvious—of course, Connell and Marianne have to get back together—but the novel ends before their decision to return to each other can feel tangible.

This will frustrate some readers, especially in the case of the muted ending the novel provides. Though Connell and Marianne commit to a course of action that changes their dynamic once again, the outcome of their choice is too uncertain to know whether they chose poorly. In a way, the novel feels more compelling when the two leads have yet to unlock the wisdom that experience grants them. The cusp of new knowledge is precisely where the novel decides to leave Connell and Marianne.

Even though the novel plumbs through plenty of intense emotional experiences, it still feels surprisingly propulsive. Of Rooney’s four novels, Normal People is her most accessible work, deploying terse prose that grounds the reader in the precise stakes of each moment. To those who are curious about one of the world’s most urgent authors, look no further than this novel.