The plot depicts their character development as they deal with topics such as mental health, social class, and miscommunication as life continues to drive them back toward each other. Normal People follows the story of the two deeply damaged characters, Marianne and Connell, as they navigate from high school into their young adult lives as they mature from mere acquaintances to seemingly mismatched lovers with complex relationships. Thus, I decided to write an article about it in hopes of actually dealing with these enigmatic/incomprehensive feelings. To me, Normal People is one of those books where you don’t know how to feel once you finished it, but strangely enough I had way too many emotions about this book that I could not fathom into proper, logical sentences. I distinctly recall finishing it just around 11 pm and feeling absolutely, positively lost in life. I began reading Normal People shortly after I bought the novel, and I tore through it in the span of just a few hours. I had heard from several friends who read it that they loved it, and although I knew of the vast amount of praise that Rooney’s book was receiving, I was also aware of the mixed reviews – people either loved the book or they did not care for it – and that HBO had released a 12-part show of the novel in April of 2020 which I had not seen yet, but I have always preferred to read the book before watching the show or movie anyways. This January, I picked up a copy of the novel Normal People by Sally Rooney whilst visiting my family back home in hopes to get out of my reading slump that was lasting longer than I care to admit.

Normal people a novel