Sally Rooney’s best seller, coming-of-age story, ‘Normal People’, unpicks modern relationships for what they really are. Turbulent, complex and passionate. Dubbed as the ‘Salinger for the Snapchat generation’, Rooney truly does appeal to the younger generation by putting into words exactly what the youth of today think, feel and experience. Sally Rooney's incredible impact on love and literature in the 21st century gives her novel, Normal People, a certain brilliance that other authors of today simply cannot reach.
Sally Rooney is an Irish author and screenwriter who has published 3 novels: Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018) and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021). Rooney has gathered a great deal of commercial success and has been widely critically acclaimed, with the young author gaining prestigious accolades such as The British Book Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and The Irish Book Award. In 2018, Rooney also became the youngest author to receive the Costa Award (previously known as the Whitbread). Since then, the author has written two TV series for her most popular novels: Conversations with friends and Normal People, which are both available to watch via BBC iPlayer and Hulu. Rooney is a leading light in the world of literature and love and has been named in Times ‘100 most influential people in the world’ in 2022.
Rooney’s inspiration for writing Normal People comes from none other but herself. After writing a short story ‘At the Clinic’, for London-based literary magazine - The White Review – in 2016, Rooney became fascinated by the characters she had created, thus ‘Normal People’ was born.
Rooney invites her readers on a journey through the separate and unified lives of her two main characters, young adults: Marianne and Connell. The two characters serve as binary opposites throughout the novel, with Marianne being a wealthy, plain-looking, social outcast and Connell being the attractive, working -class ‘golden boy’ of their high school. The two make an unlikely pairing and Rooney effortlessly highlights both the highs and lows of the ‘opposites attract’ trope by truly diving deep into their relationship and exposing its ugly truths alongside the moments of jubilation and ecstasy as they ‘come-of-age’ together.
“A tender and prescient love story… it’s all about the intensity of early love, the kind that stays with you for the rest of your life” Elle
Rooney refuses to paint love through rose tinted lenses and highlights the messy, complicated aspect of Marianne and Connell’s relationship. A prominent theme within the novel is miscommunication as this is the couple’s fatal flaw – preventing them from remaining in a stable relationship. Normal People effortlessly appeals to the millennial and gen z demographic as Rooney showcases how the internet, mental health, insecurities, popularity or other people can drive a wedge between two people. Rooney adopts a unique style of writing, banishing the speech mark. This only emphasises the strain that miscommunication has on the couple as the line between speech and thought becomes blurred and interpretable to the reader.
“ Love, sex, class, work, miscommunication and melancholy are all described in prose that is somehow at once lapidary and mysterious; glittering but with the feeling of something moving like weather behind the sentences” – Stuart Maconie, News Statesman Books of the Year
Normal people tastefully includes a great variety of social issues such as depression, anxiety, sexual, physical and emotional abuse, male mental health and family struggles. Through this, Rooney calls for her readers to make close, deep, personal connections with her characters as both millennials and gen z are generations plagued with these problems.
Normal people is a brilliant novel, touching on sensitive, relevant topics and beautifully depicts love in the 21st century. It is a must read.
