Normal People

Normal People by Sally Rooney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sally Rooney’s writing is almost preternaturally easy to read and digest, and I finished this in three days. It starts off as a YA Romeo & Juliet story, but things get more complicated and quite a bit darker when the star-crossed lovers go to university and contrive in various ways to not end up together. Some of this feels like the author pushing her characters around to maintain tension in the story, a way of establishing beyond doubt that these two people belong together by showing how unhappy they are apart. But that drama keeps you reading, so the artifice is forgivable. Rooney’s debut focused on four characters rather than two, and had more surprising and affecting revelations in store for them. This book is more controlled, but also more conventional. Through their love the two misfits feel able to relax into themselves and stop worrying about being weird. That’s sweet. Conversations With Friends had some harder truths in store for the reader, which makes it a finer achievement.

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