Book 17 - Forgotten Feelings

Title: Normal People

Author: Sally Rooney

Genre: coming-of-age softstyle fiction

I wish this book had been in my life when I was in high school or university, when I was busy trying not to crumble under the sheer force of the emotions (hot and fierce and somehow larger than me) raging through my body. The truth is that I almost cast this read aside, almost discredited it as feeling too much like something I'd read in a writer workshop surrounded by other pimply undergrads with notebooks full of rambles. DAMN am I glad I didn't. Rooney has a way of capturing the sense of being a child acting out grownup roles (look at me throw a dinner party, look at me foster complicated relationships, look at me drinking too much coffee) that eventually become the habits of real life.

Connell and Marianne's relationship is confusing and frustrating, and doesn't follow the straight, regular lines of healthy relationships depicted in media. It's fucked up - they both are - but, really, who and/or what isn't?

There's a lot of talk around being a good person in this book, and that's the juicy centre of the story for me - besides, of course, being jolted back to my university days where I wallowed in way more self-pity than necessary and called it process; called it growing up. The centre of this unique book is that there are no equations in life. Nothing any person does will consistently equal happiness, goodness, success...any of those things. As corny as it sounds, everyone's path is different, and those paths only wind harder as we ricochet against others like dust motes in sunlight.

This is a melancholic sort of story, and will strike a long-lasting chord with anyone who was once or is a young person.

Rating: 🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓