I liked Rooney’s first book CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS so much that after I finished reading it Ire-read it immediately I don’t like this one, her second, quite as much. That said, I started reading it at 11pm and then somehow forgot to stop. I can’t remember the last time I read a book in a single sitting, especially overnight. So when I say I didn’t like it quite as much, this is more a compliment to CONVERSATIONS than a commentary on NORMAL PEOPLE.
NORMAL PEOPLE tells the story of Marianne and Connell. They meet in high school, where she is wealthy but not popular, and he is the reverse. He gets to know her because his mum is her mum’s cleaner. They start having sex, but he insists on keeping it secret, and eventually invites a girl who is always rather horrible to Marianne to the school dance. Marianne does not take this well. It sounds like the kind of drama that can happen in high school which is easy for adults to dismiss, but in this telling it is horrible and affecting, much like it is when this kind of thing actually happens to you in high school. The pair split up and then meet again in college, and their relationship is off and on again over a number of years.
There is a not very successful sub-plot about Marianne’s abuse at the hands of her mother, much like the not very successful ‘self harm’ sub-plot in CONVERSATIONS. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that perhaps the author feels like we need some kind of damage to get us to care about a character. The end also is not so very successful for me – it wants to be a happy ending, but somehow Rooney can’t quite let it be. Whatever, these have got to be minor caveats because the fact remains I stayed up till 3am on it. To tell you the truth, I was shocked when I looked at the clock, amazed that it had been four hours instead of five minutes.
What I find particularly joyful about it I think is that Rooney is a young (twenty six!) and the book feels like a young person’s book; and yet it is at the same time delightfully Victorian. Unlike much modern writing, which feels itself superior to such boring antiques as plot, or character, here is a writer who clearly loves a narrative. She describes for example how agitated Connell feels when he has to stop reading Austen’s EMMA, and comments:
It feels intellectually unserious to concern himself with fictional people marrying each other. But there it is: literature moves him. One of his professors calls it the pleasure of being touched by great art.
Undoubtedly a pleasure I had from this book
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i will love to share my testimony to you all the people in world. My name is Clara James form new York i got married to my husband about 2 year ago we start having problems at home like we stop sleeping on the same bed,fighting about little things he always comes home late at night,drinking too much and sleeping with other women out side i have never love any man in my life except him. he is the father of my child and i don't want to loose him because we have worked so hard together to become what we are and have today .few month ago he now decided to live me and the kid,being a single mother can be hard sometimes and so i have nobody to turn to and i was heart broken.i called my mom and explain every thing to her,my mother told me about PRIEST WISDOM how he helped her solve the problem between her and my dad i was surprise about it because they have been without each other for three and a half years and it was like a miracle how they came back to each other. i was directed to priest wisdom and i explain everything to him,so he promise me not to worry that he will cast a spell and make things come back to how we where so much in love again and that it was another female spirit that was controlling my husband he told me that my problem will be solved within 2 days if i believe i said OK So he cast a spell for me and after two days my love came back asking me to forgive him i Am so happy now. so that why i decided to share my experience with every body that have such problem contact priest wisdom the great spell caster on his email Id: supernaturalspell1@gmail.com or whatsapp him +2348124644470 or you can read more of him on supernaturalspell1.blogspot.com/