Reviews with content warning for Suicide attempt - Normal People

Reviews tagging 'Suicide attempt'

Normal People by Sally Rooney

46 reviews

carlapastor's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Just wow. Such a great, great book. Incredible depiction of young people and how hard it is to figure things out sometimes. I couldn't love it more. Raw characters and a raw story with great writing. This might be a controversial opinion but I didn't mind at all the quotation marks. I found it to not be annoying at all. I have yet to watch the show but I found this honestly amazing, but I am also a sucker for this kind of stories where nothing incredible happens, it's just someone's life and the ups and downs that come with it (Perfect Days is a great movie that reminded me of this book!).

Content Warnings

jazzuar's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

waytoomanybooks's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Rooney is such a good writer, and I love her style! I just wish the ending wasn’t so ambiguous and abrupt, and I wish I had gotten to see Marianne blossom at least as much as Connell since the book was supposed to be about the both of them growing up, growing apart, finding each other again, etc. But it was pretty much all about Connell and then sometimes Rooney remembered that Marianne has thoughts and feelings, too.

Marianne and Connell’s relationship is so fascinating though. It is so incredibly toxic, yet they clearly belong together at the same time. I think that their relationship is realistically portrayed, and I could sympathize with one or the other of them at different stages in their lives and their relationship. I think that is a testament to Rooney’s writing: feeling like I want/need to evaluate the characters, to pick a side, and to sympathize and empathize with them and why.

However, I hated the ending. Ambiguous endings infuriate me, especially when the ambiguity suggests what it suggests here. We’re really ending with

Marianne staking her worth on her on-again, off-again boyfriend and putting him above her and “letting him go” so he can, what? Some bullshit about how she’s a springboard from which his life can “truly begin”

?

Before I read the last ⅓ of the book, I was expecting to give it a 4 out of 5, but seeing Marianne’s storyline and the ending get fumbled leads me to give it a 3 out of 5.

Content Warnings

readingqueerly's review against another edition

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emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

A few things this book needs: content/trigger warnings, a character sheet, and actual normal people.
I'm sorry but I could not stand the main characters. Especially in the first part during secondary school, that was the hardest to get through. They are supposedly 'normal people' , yet they are so unhinged and for me their interactions were so hard to follow. The lack of punctuation wasn't the problem, it was the actual content of the interactions that just to me didn't make sense at times. I feel like I'm missing something?
I think I'm still glad I read it, but it was very much a let down and was really not for me. Those main characters being the way they are in what is basically a character study of a book was just not it.

Content Warnings