Sally Rooney

OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES AND TOP FIVE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER THE BBC THREE ADAPTATION OF NORMAL PEOPLE WILL PREMIERE ON APRIL 26 WINNER OF THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2018 WINNER OF THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR WINNER OF NOVEL OF THE YEAR AND BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS WINNER OF THE SPECSAVERS NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS INTERNATIONAL AUTHOR OF THE YEAR LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018 LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019 Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying - something life-changing begins. Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't. 'The literary phenomenon of the decade.' - Guardian SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE RSL ENCORE PRIZE 2019 LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2019

Normal People

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the celebrated author of Conversations with Friends comes "a stunning novel about the transformative power of relationships" (People), hailed as "a masterpiece, pure and simple" (Minneapolis Star Tribune). "Among the vast cohort of new millennial novelists, none are connecting with readers as intimately, or generating as much excitement, as Sally Rooney."--Entertainment Weekly WINNER OF THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARD * WINNER OF THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD * LONGLISTED FOR: THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE * THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE * THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION * THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE * THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers--one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship. Praise for Normal People "[Rooney] has been hailed as the first great millennial novelist for her stories of love and late capitalism . . . [she writes] some of the best dialogue I've read."--The New Yorker "Arguably the buzziest novel of the season, Sally Rooney's elegant sophomore effort . . . is a worthy successor to Conversations With Friends. Here, again, she unflinchingly explores class dynamics and young love with wit and nuance."--The Wall Street Journal, "12 Best Books of Spring" "Keenly observed, deeply perceptive, and psychologically acute, Normal People brims with disarming insights into how men and women wrestle with sex, class, popularity, and young love."--Esquire, "Best Books to Read This Spring"

A Novel

Pia 

No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not. She knows he loves her, she doesn't wonder about that anymore.

 In a way she felt very close to ner him while reading, as if she was witnessing his most private thoughts, 

You didn't say anything about wanting to stay here, she adds You would have been welcome, obviously. You always were.

I don’t agree, just because you’re family doesn’t mean you love each other 

I know it probably feels like they don't, he said. But at the end of the day they're your family, they love you.

Most people go through their whole lives, Marianne thought, without ever really feeling that close with anyone.

 Connell was so beautiful. lt occurred to Marianne how much she wanted to see himn having sex with someone; it didn't have to be her, it could be anybody. 

Valle Fernandez

" I bet you would pretend not to know me if we bumped into each other " 

" I would never pretend not to know you, Connell " 

Mackenzie Shah

That's the only part of himself he wants to protect, the part that exists inside her.

If people appeared to behave pointlessly in grief, it was only because human life was pointless, and this was the truth that grief revealed.

Still, Connell went home that night and read over some notes he had been making for a new story, and he felt the old beat of pleasure inside his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car. Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.

It was culture as class performance, literature fetishized for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterward feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.

The more he thinks about it, the more it resonates. He doesn't even have to think about it, because he feels it: its syntax seems to have originated inside him.

Outside her breath rises in a fine mist and the snow keeps falling, like a ceaseless repetition of the same infinitesimally small mistake.

So many things pass secretly between people anyway

Well, I haven't been home since the exams. I don't know, do I still have pupils? She looks in his eyes, where his pupils are swollen to round black bullets. Yes, she says. They're huge. He strokes her hand again and says more quietly: Oh well. They get like that when I see you anyway.

Maybe I want to be treated badly, she says. I don't know. Sometimes I think I deserve bad things because I'm a bad person.

...feeling a strange sense of nostalgia for a moment that was already in the process of happening.

I'm not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.

Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves

That was it, people moved away, he moved away. Their life in Carricklea, which they had imbued with such drama and significance, just ended like that with no conclusion, and it would never be picked back up again, never in the same way.

Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she's aware of this now, while it's happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.

this was like the epitome of listening to my brother talk about his love life

Claire Jorgensen

Ozge Kara

3.5 - This was much, much better than Conversations with Friends. Somewhere in the comments it says this was a high-end Young Adult novel which I completely agree. The writer is in her late twenties so it makes sense that she writes about people in their 20ies but I guess it is not for me. I read many of these when I was a teenager and I am done. It is a page turner, goes fasts. Nothing more

I don’t really know how I feel about this book. I enjoyed reading it and it’s definitely good but I guess it’s just so diffrent from the books that I normally read. It’s much closer to the real world and a story that can basically happen everywhere.

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018 Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years. This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life - a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us - blazingly - about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege. Alternating menace with overwhelming tenderness, Sally Rooney's second novel breathes fiction with new life.

Karis Ryu

Kat Rector

Very slow pace, the ending was kinda disappointing, and it was entirely just them chasing and letting go over and over again.

Kaylee Aldrich 

it’s always hard to change and to accept change. and whether we learn to take in who we are as a whole, or to avoid understanding ourselves, we will always be perceived by others. 16 year old me would have ate this up and made it her whole personality annoyingly, but that also means i could relate to the characters in a sense. overall, a very good read.

Kira L

This book was poetic and heart wrenching. It’s not 5 stars because it took me so long to get through proving I wasn’t enamoured with it and sometimes it was just a bit too sad. But I think the good representation of men’s mental health was a great aspect

Emmm :p

makenna!!! 

“At times he has the sensation that he and Marianne are like figure skaters, improvising their discussions so adeptly and in such perfect synchronization that it surprises them both. She tosses herself gracefully into the air, and each time, without knowing how he’s going to do it again, he catches her.”

sally rooney, you and i need to have a little talk about the ending.

the way the last two pages just ripped my heart out 😭

audrey 🪐

CLAUDIA VALDES

The amount of miscommunication in the book was worldly. Page after page I wanted to dive in and smack tf outta Marianne and Connell. The ending was also a slap in the face; maybe it has some more philosophical meaning but to me, it felt rushed, useless and kinda dumb. There was no real conclusion. It literally felt like any other chapter that suddenly came to an end and you’re left with your thoughts of confusion and frustration. 

I’m not even gonna watch the show because it might trigger some heart problems for me. 

On another note, real cool it starred in Ireland. Loved that!

Kylie edwards

I really liked this book and I enjoyed most of the story. A lot of it made me upset, which I wasn’t prepared for. The ending made me sad, but I understood it. There were parts in the middle that were too upsetting (when she’s in Sweden). Maybe I just didn’t understand the book, but I think it just unsettled me too much in some parts to give it 5 stars. Which maybe makes it deserve five stars more.

absolutely loved this book. i’m glad i watched the series first, i love the cast very much and it gave me a better sense of Connell and Marianne. highly recommend this one

Jonathon Sanders

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying - something life-changing begins. Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.

i’ve never been this happy and satisfied with a book ending before. i can’t explain it.

Nouran

I don’t know what to rate this.. I’m stuck between 2 and 3 ⭐️.. I honestly didn’t enjoy the writing, but there were some good quotes.. I didn’t feel very connected to the characters because their issues were only ever talked about at 70%, but we didn’t see them getting better because of the time jumps every chapter.. the miscommunication between them was just annoying, and that ending was very unnecessary?!

Emma

Wow! What a journey. Beautiful, painful, complicated... ♡

Such a cute story but it can feel repetitive at times, seeing that that is the premise of the book you can get over it 

Grosso

heleen de boever

This is where I find star ratings incredibly frustrating and restrictive... I practically inhaled this book, and cared deeply about its two characters, to the point that it left me feeling fragile and exposed. It's likely my personal desire for some satisfying, upward arch towards resolution, but it's just that I wouldn't have minded just a little more plot, or maybe a tad more (slap me now) "character development" in Marianne and Connell's relationship.
Still, the way Rooney writes about modern relationships, and sex, is fucking exhilarating. A great read, this.

eve 

I enjoyed this book very much, I love a slow paced story and this was exactly that. Despite the simple nature of the storyline, I found it to be very engaging, and I started to care about the characters. They may not be completely relatable, but I've found pieces of characteristics in each of them that I could relate to.

I was a bit disappointed to see how the book ended, I would have liked to continue reading about them and not leave them like that halfway through the story.

Yeganeh 

I enjoyed this book very much, I love a slow paced story and this was exactly that. Despite the simple nature of the storyline, I found it to be very engaging, and I started to care about the characters. They may not be completely relatable, but I've found pieces of characteristics in each of them that I could relate to.

I was a bit disappointed to see how the book ended, I would have liked to continue reading about them and not leave them like that halfway through the story.

I don’t know I had to really push myself to read it. It wasn’t bad, it’s just… normal people I suppose. I feel like I just had the same emotion throughout the entirety of the book until I turned the last page and then was shocked.

Cheyenne Willis

probably one of my favourite things in this book that i didn’t notice the first time i was reading it, is how it starts with the line “Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell.” and somewhere further along you have the line “Before he lets her in he looks over her shoulder, to make sure that no one has seen her arrive.” and i think this just shows so well how they see each other in their relationship because marianne isn’t scared to openly express and talk about her feelings while connell, as much as he’s enamoured by her, intentionally only loves her in private because he cares too much about what other people think of him

i don’t know if that was sally’s intention but nonetheless i’m a really big fan of how she writes her characters and their relationships with each other 

sophia

probably one of my favourite things in this book that i didn’t notice the first time i was reading it, is how it starts with the line “Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell.” and somewhere further along you have the line “Before he lets her in he looks over her shoulder, to make sure that no one has seen her arrive.” and i think this just shows so well how they see each other in their relationship because marianne isn’t scared to openly express and talk about her feelings while connell, as much as he’s enamoured by her, intentionally only loves her in private because he cares too much about what other people think of him

i don’t know if that was sally’s intention but nonetheless i’m a really big fan of how she writes her characters and their relationships with each other 

Gia Palamos

Didn't hate it, but didn't love it. (3.8)

Normal People

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