She was laughing then, and her face was red. She was in his power, he had chosen to redeem her, she was redeemed. It was so unlike him to behave that way in public that he must have been doing it on purpose, to please her. How strange to feel herself so completely under the control of another person, but also how ordinary.

Finding the words to review Normal People is proved to be more difficult than expected. I really enjoyed it from beginning to end, but as I’m writing this, I realize I haven’t given it much thought since. The book follows Marianne and Connell through their last year of high school until after finishing college. They go to the same school, but that’s all they seem to have in common, from their socio-economic background to their personality. Still, they start a relationship which keeps going on and off throughout the book. They love each other but it’s not always possible, for multiple reasons, to be together as a couple. At times they are officially dating and sometimes they are only friends or just having sex.

While reading, I couldn’t stop. It was like the prose had hypnotized me: simple but absorbing, with a sense of familiarity that made me feel like I too was sitting among the young couple, as their friend or spying on their relationship. In the same way, Rooney, attains a level of closeness between the characters and the reader that is hard to achieve. I honestly cared about these fictional people, and I had to remind myself they were characters and not humans. As readers we get to know their past and how it defines them, how class shapes their world and how education transform their reality, as it does to us all, what makes us normal people. In this sense I think Normal People was more like a character study than a novel -maybe this is the reason why after finishing it I just moved to the next thing-.

However, now that I’m thinking about this book again, I have to say that what I liked the most was how Rooney accomplishes to display power changes in Marianne and Connells’ relationship. In some cases, it changes swiftly, in others so abruptly that the whole dynamic between the characters must be rebuilt. And how this power structures are sometimes defined by them -as they grow and their personalities change or as they have ups and downs- or by the environment -be that a new city, a new group of friends or a job-.

So, to conclude, I’m glad I’m writing this and revisiting this book (that I read a few weeks ago) because now I’m remembering how much I enjoyed it. I truly recommend it.

About Autora Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney was born in Ireland in 1991, where she grew up. She studied English in Trinity University in Dublin. Normal People is her second published novel.

Normal People was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. It’s won several prizes, including the Costa Award and “Irish Novel of the Year” at the Irish Book Award.

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