Sally Rooney
Set in Ireland, Normal People by Sally Rooney explores the on-again, off-again relationship of two young people whose love affair begins in high school. Marianne is an intelligent, skinny, and anxiety-ridden social outcast in high school. Connell is a popular football player. The two are attracted to each other even though they seem totally unmatched.
The couple come from different social classes and have very different home environments. Connell’s mother, Lorraine, is a single mother who had him when she was seventeen. She is a cleaning lady in Marianne’s home. She is kind, sensitive, generous, and showers her son with unconditional love. By contrast, Marianne’s widowed mother is cruel, neglectful, resents her daughter, and encourages Marianne’s brother to bully and abuse his sister.
The narrative unfolds in the third-person point of view, alternating between Marianne’s and Connell’s perspectives. At Connell’s request, they keep their relationship secret in high school. They go their separate ways but pick up where they left off when they both attend Trinity College Dublin. Here, the tables are turned. Marianne is popular and socially in her element while Connell feels very much the outsider. The two get together, separate while they have relations with different partners, but then get back together in an on-again, off-again dance that continues for several years.
Rooney’s dialogue captures the tentative quality in their relationship. They hesitate, fail to communicate properly when they are together while simultaneously feeling comfortable only when they are around each other. The absence of quotation marks in the dialogue as the narrative shifts seamlessly between the spoken word and their interiority exposes their failure to fully articulate their feelings or to understand one another. Both characters are insecure and vulnerable. Marianne is damaged. Her internalized feelings of being unworthy of love complicates her relationships. Connell suffers from depression, especially after the suicide of a former class mate. They are both isolated, confused, and wounded in different ways. And it is only in those moments when they are together that they feel less alone.
With no plot, the novel focuses on the tentative and evasive nature of young love. Rooney’s diction is effortless, precise, and direct. Her dialogue captures the way young people actually talk. Her strength lies in her ability to pierce the veneer of the outer shell of her characters and portray their psychological and messy emotional lives with authenticity and insight.