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Normal People (Winner of The Costa Novel Award 2018)

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Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years.This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life - a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us - blazingly - about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege. Alternating menace with overwhelming tenderness, Sally Rooney's second novel breathes fiction with new life. Read more


Publisher ‏ : ‎ FABER ET FABER; Main edition (May 2, 2019)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0571334652


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 50


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.9 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.08 x 0.71 x 7.8 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #170,222 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #11,835 in Literary Fiction (Books) #56,456 in Genre Literature & Fiction


#11,835 in Literary Fiction (Books):


#56,456 in Genre Literature & Fiction:


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Top Amazon Reviews


  • A masterfully-written novel about young love in the 21st Century
Do you ever consider the profound impact significant others have on your life? Decades ago, when our son was toddlerish, my husband and I took him into the country for a weekend. We rented a tiny, Eskom-free stone cottage in a dark valley. One night, with the boy asleep, we sat outside, dazzled by the night sky, and drank a bottle of wine. We’d been a couple for more than a decade by then and somehow began talking about how being together had shaped us as individuals and influenced our life decisions. It was a gentle, but remarkably illuminating discussion for both of us and about both of us. It's a conversation I regularly replay to myself to remember how lucky I am. I thought a great deal about that night as I read Sally Rooney’s novel, Normal People last week. Normal People tells the story about Marianne and Connell’s relationship, which begins when they’re at school in a small town in West Ireland and continues – on and off – for another four years while they’re at college in Dublin. It’s a tale with so many layers that, while my experience of reading it bordered on compulsive, I find it difficult to analyse – suffice to say that it’s not about the plot; it’s about the characters and their inner lives, and the writing. Rooney, who is 27-years-old, is widely feted as the next best thing, “one of the most exciting voices to emerge in an already crackerjack new generation of Irish writers”, and a “Salinger for the Snapchat generation”. I don’t dispute the praise. Her writing is extraordinarily elegant. Confident and uncluttered, it conveys an immediacy and ingenuousness that drew me in and held me from beginning to end, which came too soon. The story, I felt – shocked to discover I'd reached the final full stop – was unfinished, there were loose ends to tuck away. But, once I recovered, I realised the way it ends is part of its magic. Real relationships are forever evolving, eternally incomplete, and so it figures that a novel about relationships will be too. Normal People is told from both Marianne’s and Connell’s points of view. It reminded me how, no matter how well you think you know a person, your perceptions and understanding of what they say and mean can be skewed. The novel also shows how our identity, self-esteem and who we become as adults are bound to our upbringing – indefinitely. Marianne is from a wealthy, but unloving and dysfunctional family. Connell is from a poor, but loving family. It largely shapes who they are and how they relate to the world. The novel also examines the impact of bullying – both on victims and perpetrators. Ironically, I might not find the book easy to analyse, but I could go on forever, waffling about the many layers in Normal People. I daren’t though because then you might not feel compelled to read the book yourself, which would be a pity. A huge pity. Here’s a tiny sample of the writing to demonstrate what a humungous pity it would be: “Helen has given Connell a new way to live. It’s as if an impossibly heavy lid has been lifted off his emotional life and suddenly he can breathe fresh air. It is physically possible to type and send a message reading: I love you! It had never seemed possible before, not remotely, but in fact it’s easy. Of course if someone saw the messages he would be embarrassed, but he knows now that this is a normal kind of embarrassment, an almost protective impulse towards a particularly good part of life. He can sit down to dinner with Helen’s parents, he can accompany her to her friends’ parties, he can tolerate the smiling and the exchange of repetitive conversation. He can squeeze her hand while people ask him questions about his future. When she touches him spontaneously, applying a little pressure to his arm, or even reaching to brush a piece of lint off his collar, he feels a rush of pride, and hopes that people are watching them. 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." I’m not sure I feel changed after reading Normal People, but I do feel upgraded. And reminded about how life is a series of relationships, and how a few of them help shape who we are and how we live our lives. And that thinking about that and acknowledging those who positively influence us is important. And yes, Sally Rooney has a fan in me. My current read is her first novel, Conversations with Friends. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 1, 2018 by Penny

  • Amazing
This book was great. Not a whole lot happens but the writing style and the author's skill is fantastic here. Very surprised I gave this 5 stars but I don't recall ever reading a book that I was so invested in the characters and story. I couldn't put this one down.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 4, 2023 by MAURO

  • Incredible book!
I could not put this book down. I finished in 1 day. I have started watching the TV show and it goes with the book, but I think I am going to read it again after I was the show. Such a heart-breaking, intimate love story.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 5, 2023 by Stephanie C

  • Great story and came in perfect condition
So I have been waiting to watch the raved-about show until I read the book and immediately understood the hype. Firstly, the book was in perfect condition when delivered. Secondly, the story itself is so RAW and real in comparison to our lives. It was super easy to read (I read it in one day) and the story itself is beautifully told. The author makes both characters relatable at different times and I love the connection between the two main characters. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 8, 2023 by Allyn Huntsinger

  • Good writing, not a particularly great book.
IM GOING TO SPOIL THIS BOOK FOR YOU 1. I really would argue against reading this book if you are sensitive to descriptions of dissociation (particularly as a coping mechanism for abuse, and also-in another character-as a symptom of depression. Points to the author for having a spot-on description of depression though) also there's s&m used kindof as a coping mechanism for the psychological effects of abuse if that's not your thing 2. Now that the warnings are out of the way I just want to say I love the characters. I genuinely like them and want them to do well, and if you like books with unsatisfying/ambiguous endings then this probably won't bother you too much. The issue I encounter is that the problems and traumas these characters goes through are too real for me, and because of that I want them to get past them in a healthy way. I want them to end up happy and healthy because so much of their lives has not been that (especially marianne, poor thing). This book doesn't really do that. In Marianne I recognize a young woman trying to carve out a life for herself in spite of a lifetime of emotional, psychological and physical abuse. It can be hard to recognize the specific patterns and behaviors that abuse causes us to adopt to survive when you've been doing them for as long as you can remember, and because of that I'm really sympathetic to Marianne and I understand her struggle and maybe even why she does some of the things that she does, but there isn't really a resolution for that. She doesn't seek help like connell does (and no having a man doesn't count as seeking help). In reviews and such they say that these two dance around each other, but at the end it seems like one is trying to get help, learning and growing to become a healthier person while the other is sinking deeper into their own unhealthy coping skills and trauma, and at the end they just sort of drift into a vaguely together, still-unhealthy-but-at-least-hes-not-hitting-her relationship (that ends??? I think??? Dude I don't even know). This feels very Twilight to me, specifically in the "this relationship is severely unhealthy but I can't be with anyone else and we're not going to try to figure out why we're so unhealthy, we're gonna romanticize it" way. And (actual legit spoiler) the two main characters break up (???? Sort of??? It's not specified????) In the same way that Connell and his other girlfriend do-one girl is jealous of another girl. 3. I know this is a long review but I feel some things k. Now to the last point. I've heard some reviews and such claiming that this is a big feminist book (which is a weird title to give a book that's not about feminism) in I would argue that it's a good book, but not necessarily a feminist one. If by "feminist book" one just means "a book with well-written female characters who are complex and different and who have sex and it's normal and they as characters have feminist views" then sure, go ahead. But my problem with that title is that Marianne finds peace (sort of) through a man, and that's the end to her story. She describes herself as feeling empty, like a void that has to be filled (and while she herself doesn't seem to realize it I think this may be a cause of being abused for as long as she was alive and having severe depression because of it) but she literally says "she was in his power, he had chosen to redeem her, she was redeemed" and like, that's the end. The goal here. Have you ever been getting towards the end of a book and it feels like nothing's resolved, and you look ahead to see how many pages are left to resolve the thing? Well, I read that sentence with only three pages left and it did not get resolved. For a relationship that seemed initially to be about how being around each other was so freeing, it ends in control: in power, and who gives it. It's the power to give someone value. While most of Marianne's relationships have been with people who degraded her and gave her no value, it ends with a relationship with someone who gives her value and praise and she gives him power over her because of that. But the problem I have with that is that at the end, her value still comes from someone else. The author doesn't let Marianne learn that her value is inherent, independent of a man, she just says 'you felt you didn't have value because everyone said so, but now you do because this man says so' and that's a concerning dynamic. Look, the truth is that as far as writing and characterization is concerned, this is a good book. I wouldn't say it's an enthralling book because I generally finish enthralling books within the day or at most a week, and this one I could pick up and put down without really caring too much if I actually finished it other than knowing that I wanted to finish the book for the sake of finishing the book, but I like the characters and I root for them and the dialogue and interactions and plot of the characters is interesting. Also, whether you take this as a good point or a bad point (and I personally see it as a little bit of both) I was actually quite angry at the end of the book because of how it turned out and while that can definitely be interpreted as a bad thing (because it's a FRUSTRATING ending) it did at least make me feel something so there's that ... ? ... show more
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 24, 2019 by Sarah

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