The unexpected understanding between them turns into a love that Connell is desperate to keep hidden, since he believes Marianne “is considered an object of disgust” by their peers. From their first conversation, he is able to tell Marianne things he is too afraid to say to anyone else.

Despite this loose connection, in the five minutes he has to wait for his mother, Connell admits to Marianne that a teacher at school makes him uncomfortable with her sexually suggestive behavior toward him. They are barely acquaintances, joined only by Connell’s mother’s employment. The doorbell rings, and she answers to find her schoolmate Connell Waldron arriving to pick up his mother, who cleans Marianne’s house. The novel begins with Marianne Sheridan eating chocolate spread straight out of the jar while sitting on the kitchen countertop of her home in Carricklea, County Sligo, Ireland. Taking the familiar theme of the popular guy falling in love with the outcast girl, in Normal People Rooney has made something original and contemporary, deeply engaged with gender and class politics. In contrast, Normal People is measured, deliberate, and often heartbreaking, particularly as the characters recall painful experiences with eerie calm. The prose and pacing in Conversations with Friends is quick and light, the plot volatile and addictive. In May of this year, Hulu announced it will be producing a miniseries based on the book.īoth Rooney’s novels explore power dynamics between men and women, but where her first delves deeper into female relationships and friendships, Normal People keeps a tight focus on Marianne and Connell, the novel’s two main characters. Among other accolades, Normal People won best novel in the 2018 Costa Book Awards, was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize and the 2019 Women’s Prize for fiction, and appeared at number twenty-five in the Guardian’s list of the hundred best books of the twenty-first century. The following year, Faber published her second novel, Normal People, which was released in the US in April 2019. Irish writer Sally Rooney has been a sensation since her debut novel, Conversations with Friends, was published in 2017, when she was just twenty-six.

Normal people book review