A review of the award-winning novel “Normal People” by Sally Rooney
I recently read “Ordinary People” by Diana Evans and now I have consumed “Normal People”, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, the second novel by Irish writer Sally Rooney. Of course, in a sense, nobody is ordinary or normal, but both these works deal with people who are living quotidian lives with which one can easily relate.
Rooney’s beautifully written work tells the story of two young people from the West coast of Ireland who, over a narrative spanning four years, repeatedly become friends or lovers. Marianne is middle class and a loner with low self-esteem, while Connell is working class and has better social skills, but each is clever and goes to university and their repeated interactions lead to the conclusion of the penultimate sentence that: “People can really change one another”.