Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Normal People

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Normal People by Sally Rooney

636 reviews

itsaromance's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.5

Expected a romcom, found a deep and emotional story.

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pookiee's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced

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

2.75

The whole time I was thinking, Do some people really talk and act like this?? It all felt uncanny. But I like the idea that people may drift in and out of your life, and it's still worth having known them.

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moonie's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective relaxing slow-paced

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

4.0

I need to know if

they are still together after NY please

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littlehedgehog's review against another edition

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dark sad tense slow-paced

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

1.25

This was a fairly underwhelming read for a book that contains 7 pages of reviews. I don't really know where this book was "thrilling", "brilliant" "tender", "moving", "sexy" or "intricate". However I do know that I just read a book that is about a boy, Connell, and a girl, Marianne, who have an off/on situationship going for YEARS where he dumps her every three months bc he is a piece of shit, they get together again, and the cycle repeats. Marianne lets him do this because she had a hard upbringing and has therefore never learned to preserve an ounce of self-respect. (Spieler alert: they are both insufferable.) Also she is somehow both beautiful, sexy and charming and unbelievably ugly at the same time cause she's not like other girls. All of this is written by an author who thinks it's trendy to not use quotation marks in dialogue.
Not to mention that this book deals with sex in the most awkward and also annoying way I have ever seen. Like how do you manage to come up with so many bizarre situations related to sex?? This book tries so hard to be edgy and awkward, it's eye-wateringly cringy and, oftentimes, horrid. Fascinating, but in an awful way.
Also, everything related to sexual assault/sexual trauma was treated badly. very, very badly. Want an example?
When Marianne (now a woman, presumably in her mid-twenties) is once again confronted with her abusive brother, she thinks about the way his abuse affected her life as well as herself: "She tries to be a good person. But deep down she knows she is a bad person, corrupted, wrong, and all her efforts to be right, to have the right opinions, to say the right things, these efforts only disguise what is buried deep inside of her, the evil part of herself".
15-year-old me would have loved that and then promptly went to off herself. What the fuck. Marianne is definitely old enough to have seen a therapist at this point, or at least develop SOME kind of coping strategies, but hey, that's one way to profit off angsty audiences. Great book, great message. What in the fucking co-dependency is this mess.

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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.

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strawbert's review against another edition

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emotional medium-paced

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

3.5

The book is written very well and has many great memorable quotes. As another reviewer wrote, Sally Rooney makes the mundane spectacular. I enjoyed reading this book very much but I’m not sure what I got out of it. It felt like the characters did not grow and that each chapter was the same thing over and over - which seems like the entire point of the book to be honest. Nevertheless, the book kept me interested to the end. I think the hype for this book is based on how relatable certain parts may feel. I am now excited to read other books from Sally Rooney.

Summed up: Attemping to strike a balance between hope/understanding/independence and misery/shame while coming-of-age.

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