Book Review: Normal People
Love Defined by Others
May 24, 2020
Review by Hoda Mallone
It’s all in the title. “Normal People” is a deceptively simple yet largely loaded term. The question that plagues us from when we are children, “Am I normal?” Some of us nurse this question into a full obsession. While others just look around and slide right into seemingly normal roles. What is “normal?” Who defines it? Why is this the blank white sheet that we hold all other colors up to and compare? And what does this do to those who are richer in tone than others?
Normal People by Sally Rooney asks these questions; delicately and with a casual ease. She invites the reader to ask questions too. As any good writer should. Her coy enticements are less like, “Hey come look at this.” And more like, “Look, you know you want to.”
This is a love story. A little story about two people and the little world they inhabit. Marianne and Connell’s story is pressed against the backdrop of circumstance, social class, and the concrete beliefs in what others expect of you. When anything outside or foreign is added to their meticulous environment, they faulter. The lush greenhouse that cocoons their relationship is persnickety, never truly able find harmony.
Connell’s mother works in Marianne’s house. She’s their housekeeper. Marianne’s house is described as, the white mansion with the driveway. And just like that, the way people saw Marianne was predetermined by something she had absolutely no control over. She’s different from the high school pack and deemed other. And although she was the “rich girl,” she was a social outcast. An interesting twist on the common trope. Connell was like most people, just trying to fit in.
His friendship, as it started, with Marianne was something he kept completely to himself. And she was fine with that. This small character detail was a theme throughout the novel. A common thread that linked all the years of Marianne’s young adulthood. Each indignity, taken, digested, and passed with ease; masking Marianne’s disconnection with cool nonchalance. So when they begin their relationship and Connell suggests they tell no one about it, to the reader it seems Marianne’s agreement to this term is just more evidence of how open minded and modern she is. It’s not until the layers of abuse and neglect are revealed and discovered by Connell that you understand that her almost compulsive compliance is her effort to be “normal.”
The story follows the intense on-again-off again love affair basically over the course their college years; their connection and longing for one another palpable on the page. Rooney casts a shadow over their prospects from the start. The incessant adolescent doubt that Connell clung to was like a dead leg he dragged behind him, leaving a distinct trail.
The Monday back at school after Marianne and Connell were first together, his friend made fun of him, asking him about his mom working in Marianne’s house, teasing him about her. That was all it took for Connell to convince himself that he was done with her. The way he looked in someone else’s eyes was all he could see. And throughout the novel, a version of this scene of weakness and misunderstanding repeated over and over again. Their loneliness and lust for one another constantly bringing them back to each other, only for one person or another to let an interpretation or rather a misinterpretation, derail them again. Even when the double life, common in adolescence, starts to fade away, becoming inessential in adulthood, Connell still grapples with what it means for him to love Marianne. Agonizes over what it means for Marianne to love him.
After a particularly cruel breakup with Marianne, at a party a mutual friend struck up conversation with Connell, asking him about what was going on with Marianne. When Connell feigned ignorance, the friend laughed and made it clear that everyone knew they were together. Rooney succinctly sums up Connell’s revelation:
“This was probably the most horrifying thing Eric could have said to him, not because it ended his life, but because it didn’t. He knew then that the secret for which he had sacrificed his own happiness and the happiness of another had been trivial all along, and worthless. He and Marianne could have walked down the school corridors hand in hand, and with what consequence? Nothing really. No one cared.”
Rooney illustrates perfectly how we just can’t get out of our own way sometimes. Can’t see clearly. Can’t move forward. We can idle in our lives when faced with social adversity or social expectation, regardless of where or who put those upon us. Towards the end of the book, Connell wrote to Marianne and said:
“Deer are elegant anyway I have to say. If you were an animal yourself, you could do worse than be a deer. They have those thoughtful faces and sleek bodies. But they also kind of startle off in unpredictable ways.”
I felt this description was so apt of so many things in this novel. Of Marianne, sure, as Connell is suggesting here. But also apt of the way this book was written. The sleek but thin sentences. The lack of over punctuation. All stripping bare the fluff in lieu of deeper probing of the characters that indeed startle in unpredictable ways.