It’s hard for me to read books fairly when I know it’s a hot, newish book. I tend to subconsciously search for why “the public” is wrong about it instead of judging it as if I was reading alone. So after a lot of overthinking, I decided to give ‘Normal People’ a reread this year. It's a love story I didn't know I needed to read.
It seems to be the thing nowadays to do the casual 'not a relationship' arrangement and it was so cathartic to read a story that acknowledges that these relationships are meaningful, defining and often deeply painful too, irrespective of the label, or lack of one. I fell in love with both Marianne and Connell - there is pain, meaning, and growth in these types of "relationships" and it's so rare to see them depicted in that way - either they move on to the loves of their lives with no major emotional baggage or they end up happily ever after. Somehow this felt more real than my recent insta-love current reads.
Rooney is a master of pathos - I was surprised by how emotionally invested I got in the characters. The book’s style is also pretty cool and definitely suited to the plot. I found the relationships with the characters' parents unbearably real and true in both books: it was hard to look at. I also liked that chapters switch point of view. It's really interesting when you see the same events through different pairs of eyes and hear thoughts that stew inside the character's head. I like the dissonance it creates between what the character thinks and what he does or says.
While the plot is pretty much "a chase" (which makes me question: If it was a chase, then who was chasing whom?), there are moments of safety and vulnerability. This was obviously a character-driven book. The plot was a quiet one as we were mainly exploring the relationship of Connell and Marianne. After the first quarter of the book, the plot did start to go into circles of repetitiveness. Again, this would not have happened if the story had been condensed. There were times when I felt the characters were problematic, but it's important to understand that Rooney wanted to display adolescence and relationships being experimental rather than reinforced at the ages of 17-21. It didn't feel right out of "a fairytale love story", but rather a very realistic approach to a modern day relationship.
I respect this novel. Quite a lot actually, and there were several mentions of the very real life political issue, while being totally self aware of their position. Along with this Rooney has also referenced a whole set of other books, which play a minor role in personality development of characters. I will say, ‘Normal People’ did something that no book has done to me before. I was reading a chapter and expecting to turn the page to the next chapter. The next page was the acknowledgements. That shocked me. Take that as you will.
With that said I do have a few nitpicks. All the characters have an abundance of IQ but a lack of emotional intelligence. They both apparently have genius-level intellects, but there isn’t really anything in how they act or speak that would indicate that, it just seems like Rooney tells us they’re brilliant in order to use their academic achievements to advance the plot.
With Marianne in particular, but also Connell, it seemed like everything in life (outside of, obviously, their relationship) came so easily to them that Rooney had to contrive not-entirely-convincing obstacles that you knew they would overcome. For a book titled Normal People, there’s nothing normal about Marianne - she’s brilliant, wealthy, and beautiful - and Connell’s genius makes him pretty exceptional in his own right. Maybe the title is supposed to be ironic and the book is secretly about how life is easy if you’re smart, rich, and good-looking, but I didn’t really get that impression.
Although I’ve heard the rebuttal that there are a few references to Marianne's beauty and wealth that makes the reader think she's exceptional in her small hometown, but when she goes to college she (Connell, actually) realizes that she's more average. This book has a very "Light Academia aesthetic" theme going on, and it's well constructed. Instead of glorification of the aesthetic, there is a very realistic, slice-of-life approach to this. Rooney has mentioned topics such as burnout, depression, equating your self worth to your grades, imposter syndrome, and even normalising therapy and counselling to approach a healthier lifestyle.
THE POWER DYNAMICS
I read this book in 2023, however recently, the idea has been swimming in my head of multidimensional, changing power dynamics depicted by Sally Rooney's Normal People, above all between Marianne and Connell. Their relationship undergoes extreme transformations from moments of dominance to moments of submission to reveal deeper emotional currents.
First of all, Connell had social power because he was the most popular person among his circle, but Marianne was an outsider. Then, as they progressed into the university phase of their lives, the latter gained more confidence, which was pretty difficult for Connell to compete with-an earlier developed sense of control. A turning point is reached when Connell recognizes how he can affect Marianne:
"He reaches for her hand and she gives it to him without thinking…he lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses it. She feels pleasurably crushed under the weight of his power over her, the vast ecstatic depth of her will to please him."
This is a very nice encapsulation of the complex interplay of power and vulnerability, with Marianne's concurrent empowerment and submission. Yet, there is a more sinister level to their relationship as well-the way Marianne muses, for example:
"Her body's just a piece of property, passed around and ill-used in various ways, but it has always been in some way his, and she feels like returning it to him now."
It invites questions concerning agency and ownership within their relationship and insinuates a disquieting sense of dependency. This particular line speaks volumes:
"She would have lain on the ground, and let him walk over her body if he wanted, he knew that".
It says much of the degree to which Marianne will subordinate herself, willing to make sacrifices for Connell. It shows a most abject devotion, one which problematizes our sense of their relationship. The dynamic oscillates between dependency and emotional connection, thus pointing out the simplification of submissive versus dominant, while by the end they seem to arrive at a relationship wherein the voices of both are to be weighted as a mature understanding of vulnerabilities requires.
Marianne hates her school which has a society of pointless rules that she actively rebels against. To make matters worse she's miles ahead of the curve academically so the lessons are very dull to her. Socially she's disliked, she knows it and doubles down on it with her cutting remarks and behaviour (note - the ginger girl sees right through this and acts sympathetically towards Marianne). School and a bad homelife makes Marianne's surface character very spiky and unlikeable. Deep down she's a very frustrated individual who's dying to get out.
Marianne is everything that Connel isn't with the following exceptions, they are both smart and longing for something else (Marianne more than Connel though). Then university hits, and she really finds her place in her now-broadened world. She's allowed to be herself and she's with a different crowd. Her cutting remarks are now viewed as intelligent rather than just bitchy. The society she's in has much, much less in the way of stupid rules that try to stamp her down. Best of all, she's free of the toxicity of mother and brother and thus she blossoms.
One thing that's worth thinking about is Marianne’s choice of boyfriends after school. Firstly, there's the Swedish(?) fellow. Outwardly he seems decent enough, to the point that Marrianne starts to dislike him for it. He literally asks what he's doing wrong and Marrianne replies with 'be more nasty'. He switches to that soon enough and that works for them both for a while. The fact that Marrienne identifies with that and gains some strange form of comfort from it does seem to point towards abusive relationships in her past. Eventually it gets too much and she ends it.
So to her, relationships are transactional. She's sort of constantly seeking, from other people, what little love she actually felt from Connell, but she's doing so by trying to force herself to be what the other person wants. If she can satisfy that, then she's keeping someone around, keeping someone interested in her.
However, then she goes with another man (in Italy) who is very clearly a nasty piece of work. You'd have to be quite messed up in the head to give him for more than a few hours of your life and yet Marrianne sticks with him for a while. It shows that she's yet to completely break the chain of past abuse and she still doesn't know what's good for her. Given the ending of the series I think a lot depends on who she settles with next (if anyone, for that matter).
My thoughts about Connell as a human being first, then character, are different.
I came to blame Connell most of the time while reading. I thought he was a vain and vapid young man who truly never deserved Marianne and perhaps he doesn't. What really made me angry was when the novel rose to fame among the ranks of many late-teen/early-twenties girls like me and I kept hearing the same thing over and over again: they all loved Connell. In any conversation with women who had read the book, it would always lead back to the fact that Connell is actually really sweet and adorable and shy. I could not escape the narrative that he was somehow endearing and loveable in a way that is hard to accurately describe. It drove me mad. It still drives me mad thinking about his character. Did I miss something crucial? Was I too critical? Was I just bitter?
These conversations and questions about the book led me to sometimes last year. Only then did I finally understand why this book is so powerful. For all the faults of Marianne and Connell, every reader can see little bits and pieces of themselves because much of the book is vague. The ambiguity that once drove me mad is now somehow resolved. Connell is beloved by many readers because he truly embodies many young men of our generation. His character is the exact type of man many women experience in their first relationships, especially between late high school and early college. He is vapid. He is vain. He messes up over and over again by refusing to articulate his emotions in real life. The way he hides Marianne and his relationship with her from other people is condemnable. The truth is, that is what most of us experience in the modern world.
Connol always had a social support network that he didn't work on or especially deserve, it was just anyway. His mother was obviously very good, his friends less so. I say this because I think his friends suicide shows that the ‘laddish culture’ was a false and paper thin with not really being truely genuine. Connel took him for granted (all the lads took each other granted) and when he was gone he was devastated.
I really wanted to just highlight Connell's behavior in the early days of their relationship/non-relationship and how ultimately it has contributed to Marianne's declining sense of self-worth throughout the show/book. That power imbalance in their dynamic was set-up right at the very beginning. Keeping their sexual relationship a secret from the beginning re-enforced that notion she has of being an embarrassment or unworthy.
He struggles to show affection in public when they are in college and eventually breaks her heart by unintentionally proposing they see other people
Gaslights her when she was being bullied.
Breaks her heart again by telling her about Helen (he told Marianne he loved Helen in the book)
Him taking advantage of her in bed in Italy after she fights with Jamie. She was feeling vulnerable and that was just not the right time to make a move especially when he was also still with Helen.
I guess part of the allure of this story is that none of these people are perfect much like real life. We do romanticize a lot of what happens but so much of what he does is awful. He's sporty and shy and intelligent but I struggled with truly liking him both in the book and in the show due to his lack of self-awareness. This lack of self-awareness causes him to not only hurt himself but also damage another person even more. For someone as intelligent as he is he does not seem to see what he is doing to this girl. I understood the reason behind his behavior of course but it's just extra hurtful when you know how awful Marianne's home life and (non-existent) social life is. Connell did not even seem to take this into consideration. He was a pretty self-absorbed teen boy. Let's be honest here. Can you be in love and be so selfish and inconsiderate? Not knowing how hurtful he is makes it worse to me.
I say all this tying back to my analysis on Marianne because I just don't get it when I read comments about people not liking her. It is baffling to me. Between the two of them she was the better person in my opinion—even Connell acknowledges this in the book. She does come off cold and abrasive but I only see this as a defense mechanism. She also comes from a place of privilege and is so intelligent that this is off-putting to people. She recognizes and believes that her intelligence is her one asset and seeks validation to prove this by excelling in school/Uni and winning the scholarship. I do see how her being blind to her privilege would annoy people but she was always generous, kind and forgiving and she was only ever hurtful towards herself.
And it is kind of ironic (and beautiful in a way) how the person who repeatedly hurt her through the years became the catalyst for her healing and becoming better. The end message being that their love for each other made them better. I do still think my girl Marianne needs therapy.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
I do wonder how Connel would cope with New York. He could barely get by in Dublin, and New York is a much bigger pond, and he simply doesn't take transitions well. Then again, would Connel finally mature into full adulthood and find his niche in life? Perhaps his experience of Dublin will force him to change his ways. I've no doubt Marianne will flourish wherever she ends up provided she stays away from her hometown.
All this is to say, Normal People is a beautiful book and my initial frustration was warranted, but the resolution I came to along the way taught me a lot about life once I came back to the book. I would even go so far as to say that this book taught me how to spot a Connell in real life or understand personality traits in him that in my own relationships. That is true power and craft. I have to commend Sally Rooney for her ability to say so much through such ambiguous characters and their subsequently confusing relationships. If you haven't read it, please do. If you have, I implore you to reread it again.
so profound and thoughtful thank you for sharing this!! I also find it baffling how they're both smart people yet devoid of any emotional or communication skills lol