Normal People, Sally Rooney, 2018

Normal People Review

About

Published in 2018, Sally Rooney’s Normal People captures the strange mix of intimacy, confusion, and emotional intelligence that defines young adulthood. Set between a small Irish town and Dublin’s Trinity College, it charts the evolving relationship between Marianne and Connell—two people drawn together by something neither fully understands. Rooney writes with surgical honesty and restraint, mapping class, vulnerability, and power through conversation rather than plot. The result is a love story that feels both fragile and brutally recognizable.

Overview

Connell is popular but quietly insecure; Marianne is brilliant, aloof, and socially isolated. In high school, they begin a secret relationship—he hides her to protect his reputation, and she lets him. Later, at university, their positions reverse: Marianne becomes confident and admired, while Connell drifts. Through these shifts, they remain magnetized by each other, both unable to stay apart and incapable of staying together. Rooney strips away melodrama to show the small cruelties and tenderness that shape who we become. Every misunderstanding feels ordinary—and that’s what makes it devastating.

Summary

(light spoilers) Their relationship begins in secrecy and imbalance—Connell’s fear of judgment wounding Marianne in ways he doesn’t grasp. After graduation, their lives diverge: Connell struggles financially and emotionally at university, while Marianne blossoms yet carries deep self-doubt. They circle each other through breakups, other partners, and private reckonings. Each reunion is tender and raw, filled with the question of whether love can exist without self-acceptance. By the end, they reach a fragile peace—no grand gesture, just a moment of mutual clarity that love, to last, must allow distance. It’s an ending that feels true: not happily ever after, but honestly ever after.

Key Themes / Main Ideas

• Class and intimacy — love tangled in economic and social power.
• Communication and silence — what’s said hurts; what’s unsaid haunts.
• Self-worth — learning to feel deserving of love.
• Growth — becoming whole not through romance, but reflection.
• The ordinariness of pain — how real love often feels awkward, not grand.

Strengths and Weaknesses

• Strengths — Subtle, emotionally intelligent prose; dialogue that feels painfully real; a romance that avoids cliché.
• Strengths — Rooney’s insight into shame, power, and tenderness makes small gestures feel seismic.
• Weaknesses — The understatement may feel cold to readers expecting passion; the characters’ cycles of withdrawal can frustrate.
• Weaknesses — Minimal plot movement may alienate those who prefer traditional resolution.

Reviewed with focus on themes, audience, and takeaways — Sally Rooney