Book review: Normal People by Sally Rooney

My friend gave me his proof copy of Sally Rooney’s new novel, Normal People, last weekend. Since consuming it in nearly one sitting on a train from London to Edinburgh, I haven’t really thought about much else.

It’s a simple story of two people, Connell and Marianne, who live in the same town in the West of Ireland. They strike up an unlikely but deep bond in school, and we follow them and their relationship over four years, as they move to Trinity College Dublin together. The conceit is simple: Connell is popular, captain of the football team, handsome. Marianne is an outcast, considered strange and aloof by her school peers. When they get to college this dynamic inverts.

It is a story about growing up, learning how to fit in, and the confusing power structures that arise from those experiences. Connell knows he holds a power over Marianne: “She would have lain on the ground and let him walk over her body if he wanted, he knew that.” As their relationship progresses, Marianne realises the power she has over Connell. The whole narrative is centred around the slow-burning realisation that one person can completely change another’s life. We are supposed to realise that, if we didn’t already know, in tandem with the characters.

The narrative, told through the perspectives of Connell and Marianne with unadorned prose, oscillates between threatening and unspeakably sensitive. Scenes of psychological abuse inflicted on Marianne by her brother are hard to read; dainty interactions between her and Connell make you forget them. The power of the narrative is aided by Rooney’s unobtrusive style, the book is sometimes dark, but written with such levity.

Normal People is Sally Rooney’s second novel. Her first, Conversations With Friends, is about two couples whose lives get bound up with one another. Normal People is just a close reading of that: one relationship, one couple, but boundless energy that could have filled three more volumes.

This copy of Normal People has been passed through many hands. Each person more insistent than the last that it was something I had to read immediately. And, wandering through the streets of Edinburgh this week, on my way to shows or to meet friends, I found myself wondering what was happening to Marianne, taking a longer route home one night just so I could think about it a little more.

Normal People has established Sally Rooney, only 27, as a writer who will have staying power.

Normal People by Sally Rooney is available for pre-order now.