Normal People was a captivating read. I was instantly hooked on the two characters that carry the novel, and found it hard to put the book down. Through an on-again, off-again relationship that spans from high school through to the end of college, Rooney explores big ideas, trauma, power dynamics, and a very real and gut wrenching first love experience. On the surface, the two characters are opposites. He comes from a working class family, while she comes from a rich family; he is popular and well liked, she is not. When they come together they are tantalizing and their differences make for a great way to highlight shifting power dynamics. I sometimes felt so frustrated with this pair, that I wanted to rip out my hair. This made the writing feel intentional and smart. I will absolutely be recommending this book when it arrives in stores on April 14th. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to read it early; I can't wait to hear what others have to say about this read.

3.5 Stars

Normal People by Sally Rooney is a book that is actually difficult to review. It is understandable how this literary fiction set in Ireland is generating a lot of buzz. The story is beautifully written and explores many interesting themes, however, the plot moves very slowly and the characters are hard to connect with.

I have heard so many great things about Normal People. Some have even described Rooney’s work as “Salinger for millennials.” It is definitely a novel that will make you think and become more aware.

❀ GORGEOUS SETTING

The aspects of the story that are most enjoyable to read about are the setting and the purposeful writing. There aren’t many books that I have read set in Ireland, and it is such a gorgeous backdrop to the book. Rooney’s descriptions aren’t necessarily flowery, but more to the point and accurate. Despite this, the plot does tend to drag on quite a bit.

Rooney’s Normal People is set in 2011-2015, and I had to keep reminding myself of this while reading because it just doesn’t seem to have a contemporary feel to it. It also examines the themes of class and coming of age, which makes the novel comparable to Salinger. Also, at the heart of the novel is the question of what makes us normal. This exploration is quite interesting and will have readers asking themselves what it truly means.

❀ QUIRKY AND FLAWED CHARACTERS

Marianne and Connell are main characters that are both quirky and flawed. In fact, they are polar opposites who start off as secret lovers in high school. Their paths cross again when they both attend the same college, which creates an interesting dynamic between them. Although the characters are interesting and well-developed, I wasn’t able to connect with either of them.

Normal People is a work of literary fiction that is making a lot of buzz. It definitely contains lots of merit, and the writing is fantastic. However, the slow moving plot and the characters that are not easy to relate to make it hard to completely enjoy. For those who appreciate this genre, it is sure to be one to watch for.

I admittedly judged this book by its cover and by its excerpt. I was expecting a dramatic YA novel but what I got was a very literal and though provoking.

The main characters, Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron, are two odd teenagers, in Carricklea, Ireland. Marianne lives in a mansion with her emotionally abusive mother and sadistic older brother Alan, and Connell lives in a 2 bedroom apartment with his single single mother who cleans Marianne’s house. What they do have in common is a they are both incredibly smart and they do not have a father; Connell's father is unknown by everyone except his 35yr old mother; Marianne's father died when she was 13 - and he was abusive. Marianne and Connell begin to sleep together in high school but the relationship is kept a secret because Marianne is unpopular and socially ostracized. Upon entering College, tables are turned and Connell is the one finding it hard to fit in. Over the period of 4 years their relationship struggles back and forth between sleeping together and breaking up and much of this tragedy is cause by other people, peer pressure and social expectations.

It is very hard to explain this novel to make it sound like a worthwhile read. The premise seems so juvenile, but the truth is it is a painfully real character study, which is not usually a book that I enjoy but I could not stop caring about Marianne and Connell. They are both are so flawed and flanked by unlikable characteristics and their inability to properly communicate is very frustrating, but also so realistic. It is an awkward and depressing novel but appealing to see into their minds and compare how they see themselves and others, just like 'normal people'.

I'm actually having a very hard time writing this review. I honestly don't really know how to explain my opinions about this book, I did not like this book, I just did not feel good while reading it. The whole time I was reading it I was just left with a yucky feeling. I have a really big problem with how it seems to romanticize this submissive, abusive and self absorbed behavior. For me personally, that just does not work.

The writing seemed a bit pretentious to me too. Like it was trying too hard to sound literary. And the way it talked about uneducated people; there were many comments that were made by the main characters that I think were supposed to be the non judgmental ones, that where very judgmental.

I will admit there were some parts where the insights into peoples emotions and behaviors seemed very real and insightful but these moments didn't really make up for the rest of the book for me.

I know this book as gotten such great acclaim and has been nominated or won many awards and to each their own, but unfortunately, this book was just not for me personally.

I received an ARC of this through Netgalley.

Sally Rooney has another hit on her hands with this book. Normal people is full of witty dialogue and flawed characters. It's a story about yountful love that follows two characters from high school to university, showing the dynamic between them as they both grow, parting and coming back to one another. This book feels very real and contemporary and fresh.

Wow. I fully understand why this book has resonated with so many people. Watching the characters navigate their relationship felt so real. The premise of this book on the surface is so simple but it ends up being story with so much depth. Both characters were imperfect and I adored them. It was a joy to be able to follow them through their high school and college years. I will be running out to purchase Conversation with Friends ASAP!

RTC.

I don't tend to read a lot of what is labelled Contemporary fiction but I was intrigued by the premise of this book. The cover is what drew my eye. The original cover with the woman sitting by the pool. not the newer ones. Plus the title. Normal People. It seemed kind of something I may find interesting. I'm so glad I read this book. It's not your typical Contemporary fiction story. This one, while many would say boring, I found to be that sort of quiet and calming type of story. Something you would read after deep diving into a cement block of an Epic Fantasy. Sort of a palette cleanser. It was not a story of rainbows and puppy dogs though. The author writes from the heart and writes with the understanding of real life and the desperate, lonely, and disappointing situations that happen in "real" life. I think that's why I enjoyed this story so much was because I felt that connection with the stories characters and felt empathy for many of the situations the characters found themselves in.

I wanted to like this book so much, but I just didn’t. I like what the author was trying to do, but it did not work for me at all. I get that she was exploring what “normal” is, how our lives are influenced by those around us, how we influence them, learning about who we are and want to be as we grow up, etc, but I found that I simply didn’t care enough about the characters, their popularity, or their sex lives to enjoy the book.
This book follows two characters, Marianne and Connell, from their high school years in a small town in Ireland to through their university years in Dublin. They have an on-again-off-again relationship that is strange in and of itself. They both have self esteem issues and worry about fitting in and are trying to figure out where they are comfortable in the world. However, their challenges, especially Marianne’s and her families, are not very nuanced and most of the characters are two dimensional. I found the leaps we had to take with the characters as readers to be too much. Suddenly, the socially shunned ugly girl is popular and beautiful, the jock is an outcast, etc.
I get that this is a time of life that is confusing and full of changes and that the author is exploring this, but this book just didn’t do it for me.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a review copy of this book.

Wow, I just have to say that I was fully captivated by this novel! I wasn't sure what to expect to be quite honest. It is a little bit of a different writing style that I'm used to but oh what a storyteller Sally Rooney turned out to be!

I feel like the less you know about this book, the better it is. It is the story of Connell and Marianne. They grow up in rural Ireland and go to school together. He is a poor boy and she is a rich girl. It is not quite a romance but more of a character study of a relationship. The story is told over several years. I really could not put it down. It's quite emotional and heartbreaking at times and perhaps a little painful. While the ending is a touch bittersweet or undetermined, I feel it was the perfect ending to the story.

Thank-you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for granting me the opportunity to read this Advance Reader Copy.

Normal People is a quiet novel about two young people discovering who they are and how to be happy. The story perfectly captures the essence of what is to be young and in love.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the ARC. I really liked it!

I loved this. I thought it was an intriguing story about two very different people, exploring new things and discovering themselves. Although enjoying it... I found myself to be very lonely among these pages - which I think might have been the author's intention. Life and love is not always wonderful and perfect. You can be with some, and also feel so painfully alone. The contrast between Marianne and Connell, in terms of personality and economic status made for a very interesting read. I loved the setting of this book. I hadn't read anything set in modern Ireland before, and I really found value in this story. Rooney is an incredibly gifted writer and I'm looking forward to more people reading her work.

I personally found the characters hard to love but still highly interesting. This is a very modern "romantic" coming-of-age story about two young people's relationship. Right in the beginning, we are thrown into this strange relationship between Marianne and Connell. I found Connell weak and Marianne crazy, definitely they both want to be just normal. I do think that a lot of people now are looking, and wanting to experience and experiment different "arrangements" in terms of relationships, and this novel reflects it. The open-end ending is quite open :P
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada/Knopf Canada for the ARC.

The novel tells the relationship story of Marianne and Connell between January 2011 and February 2015. They are young people who begin a clandestine romance in their last year of high school. They then attend Trinity College in Dublin where they drift in and out of each other’s lives; they have romantic/sexual relationships with others but always return to being lovers.

Marianne, who comes from a wealthy family, is very intelligent but has poor self-esteem and is a social outcast in high school. Connell, who is raised by a working class single mother, is also very intelligent; though he is shy, he is very popular because he excels at sports. In university, the tables are turned. Connell finds life lonely because he has “no reputation to recommend him to anyone.” It is Marianne who fits in and her relationship with Connell opens doors for him: “To be known as her boyfriend plants him firmly in the social world, establishes him as an acceptable person, someone with a particular status, someone whose conversational silences are thoughtful rather than socially awkward.”

There is not much to the plot. The two are romantically involved and then some misunderstanding results in their breaking up and finding alternate partners. Then they reconnect until another miscommunication causes a rift. For example, Connell moves back to his hometown for a summer because he doesn’t have the money to pay for rent and he’s too proud to ask Marianne if he can live with her. Marianne, who has access to money, doesn’t think to ask him to move in because in her financially secure world people do what they want. As a consequence, they end up apart, each thinking the other wants a break. Sometimes it seems they don’t communicate at all. For instance, it is not until two-thirds of the way through the novel, after they’ve known each other for 4 years and even though Connell’s mother once worked for Marianne’s mother, that Marianne finally talks to Connell about the real nature of her relationship with her mother and brother? For two people who are supposed to be so connected, they are often disconnected. They certainly have difficulty communicating clearly and understanding each other! I was reminded of a soap opera where it is obvious two characters are meant to be together but they have an on-off relationship because of constant misunderstandings.

Characterization is problematic. Connell and Marianne are not especially likeable characters. Connell strikes me as weak because of “how savagely he had humiliated [Marianne]” by a choice he makes at the end of high school and has an “inability to apologise or even admit he had done it.” His later criticism of other men who behave boorishly suggests a lack of self-knowledge. Marianne is too submissive; though we learn there is a reason for her pliant behaviour, one would expect her to stand up more for herself. The physical and psychological abuse she keeps accepting from her brother Alan makes no sense.

Other characters are unrealistic. Connell’s and Marianne’s mothers are foils; one is the “good mother”: loving, kind to everyone, and wise. The other is the “bad mother”: emotionally distant and actively encouraging of Adam’s abuse of his sister. One has no negative qualities; the other has no positive ones. The young men all seem to be sexually exploitative; the young women are needy, always valuing themselves only in relation to men and being willing to do anything to be loved. The various young people are not differentiated and so are interchangeable and unmemorable.

I’m sure some readers will like the novel’s attention to detail; the book is like a microscope being used to magnify the thoughts and feelings of two people and to dissect their relationship. Unfortunately, there is a lot of extraneous detail. For example, there is a lot of description of preparing tea: “She started to fill the kettle, while he leaned against the countertop” and “She laughed, fixing the kettle into its cradle and hitting the switch” and “The kettle started to warm up and she took a clean mug down from the press” and “She takes two teabags from the box and tamps them down into the cups while the kettle is boiling” and “She fills the kettle and takes cups down from the press” and “She gets up to fill the kettle. He watches her idly while she tamps her teabag down into her favorite cup” and “The kettle clicks its switch and she lifts it out of the cradle. She fills one of the cups and then the other.” And do we really need a lesson on how a corkscrew works: “Marianne hands Connell a corkscrew. . . . Connell unpeels the foil from the top of the bottle . . . He sinks the screw into the cork and twists it downwards . . . He folds down the arms of the corkscrew and lifts the cork from the neck of the bottle”?!

The theme of the novel seems to be that “people can really change one another.” In case the reader misses it, the theme is carefully detailed at the end: “He would be somewhere else entirely, living a different kind of life. He would be different with women even, and his aspirations for love would be different. And Marianne herself, she would be another person completely. Would she ever have been happy? And what kind of happiness might it have been? All those years they’ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions. . . . They’ve done a lot of good for each other.” Yet Marianne remains submissive and Connell is still weak?!

I’m not the appropriate audience for this book since I have little interest in the sex lives of Millennials. To me, the novel seems little more than a romance trying to be literary.

Normal People is an interesting, thought-provoking novel that follows a young “couple” as they finish high school and maneuver into university life. At a mere glance, it may seem like a typical romance story between two people from different sides of the tracks, but to be honest, there is nothing really typical about this story.

Marianne and Connell come from very different backgrounds; Marianne is from a professional, well-to-do household, while Connell was raised by a single mother who cleans Marianne’s house. Marianne is somewhat of a loner – she isn’t close to her family and she doesn’t have any friends. Connell is a popular athlete who is never lacking in companionship. Despite their differences, Connell and Marianne make a connection, they just seem to click, but their relationship is not without its many flaws and obstacles.

I’m even hesitant to call what Marianne and Connell had a relationship. They spent time together, enjoyed each other’s company, were intimate, but it was all to be kept a secret from their classmates and families. He was the golden boy, she was the plain Jane. He was a person who was lauded, she was one who was mocked or ignored. Who would possibly understand the attraction between them? I hated that she accepted this arrangement, and I hated that Connell felt it was even necessary. I do understand the weight that peer pressure can put on teenagers, and that most wish that they could fit in and cause as few ripples as possible in the social pool, but the whole scenario was quite heartbreaking.

The tables turned when they began university. He was the one who found it difficult to make acquaintances, she was the one with all of the social graces. Their whole relationship seemed to be a dance of sorts. Their relationship was never truly set in stone or official, but they always seemed to find their way back to each other. With each phase of their lives they were always circling each other, revolving back in the other’s midst.

Normal People was an intriguing story. It was a love story, but it wasn’t a romance. It wasn’t about any specific event, it was about the relationship between Marianne and Connell over the course of a few years and how they always ended up coming back together. It was both simplistic and profound in expressing how the people in our lives affect the paths that we take. It was about two young people who longed to be normal, but in all honesty, who is normal?

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This coming of age story focuses around two young people who grow up together in a complicated relationship. With a focus on 4 years of their lives, this book shows the depth of love, its’ boundaries and its’ insecurities. It is a story that will touch your heart and leave you pondering the character’s intentions.

Thank you to @netgalley and @hogarthbooks for this ARC in return for an honest review

Normal People is a novel that moved me. It's a book that could've so easily veered into the grandiose, but instead asserted a quiet kind of significance, a reclamation of the momentousness of the everyday. Its story hinges on two central characters—Connell and Marianne—their thoughts, their flaws, their conversations, their relationship(s). On the surface, the story's plot isn't much: two people living their lives, coming together and drifting apart. But what draws you into this story is not the structural but the personal. Rooney's characters are so tenderly drawn, so well-realized. Their conversations feel authentic, filled with pockets of humour and hints of vulnerability and the undercurrent of things unsaid. More than anything, though, the novel's moments ring true. They are not disembodied Deep Literary Moments, but individual, particular, personal moments—not about meaning as a distant concept, but about meaning as a lived experience.

Like I said, this book moved me. I finished it crying but not knowing why, only feeling that I'd read something that struck me as remarkably honest.

(Thank you to Penguin Random House/Knopf Canada for providing me with an eARC of this via NetGalley!)

This book is light on plot but is very good at what it does, which is to build a story around very well developed characters. This was an enjoyable book for me and I did become quite invested in these characters, but I can't help but wonder if a twenty something reader might not get even more enjoyment out of the book. There were moments where I felt I was too old to watch these young people make young people mistakes. I think a younger reader would have related better to stage of life these characters were in. Still, it was a thoughtful touching story and I enjoyed the writing which is always the most important thing to me. I plan to read Conversations with Friends some time this year.

4 stars

To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about this book. I did however, find it quite interesting and finished it in two seatings! I have to say I did not particularly like the ending, but I guess it made sense for this book and the characters involved . If you are looking for a traditional love story, or at least a few normal characters, this is not the book for you . However, it really is quite an interesting study of disfunctional relationships !

I wasn't sure what I was getting into when I started this- it was a ride, a bumpy journey through complicated life, full of emotion. I had never read anything by Sally Rooney before, her writing style got me right away and I couldn't put it down. I read it all the way through wanting to know what happened to the two entirely messed up lives she put on the pages. It really got me. I was invested in Marianne instantly and felt everything she did. I really can't say enough about this book. Its beautiful and sad and I'm so happy I was given the chance to read it.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s been a while since I’ve read such a character driven story . It kept me wanting to read all night long.