Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Normal People

Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

Normal People by Sally Rooney

791 reviews

ahubitsky's review against another edition

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

2.0

if sally rooney is a leftist, and this book is imbued with marxist themes, i’m a reactionary conservative

this was genuinely really bad on multiple fronts. the most glaring problems are the stunning lack of character development, you’d think with several years of education and life under both marianne and connell’s belts by the end of the story they would’ve changed at least in some regard, but neither of them did. further, i fail to see how the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of a woman makes a compelling plotline, because make no mistake, this plot is purely abuse porn. it’s astounding the lack of agency that marianne has (willingly!). her rich background just makes her come off as a whiny bitch who can’t experience hardship in any way other than by inflicting it on herself, so she does, and in the process convinces herself shes oh so horrible.

not to mention (going back to the alleged “marxist themes”) in this book, it’s extremely interesting how this work is supposed to be marxist, but marianne LITERALLY commodifies herself as a piece of property to be transferred among owners. im pretty sure that commodification of property is something marxists are inherently against? seems like rooney either forgot the marx she read, or just proclaims herself a marxist to the media to give her work the flavor of quirkiness.

the synopsis on the back is also pretty bold, describing the book as a journey of “love and friendship,” when it’s really just a pornographic journey through self-deprecation by a girl who can’t help but act like a craigslist item to be transferred between abusers.

strongly recommend looking up trigger warnings, but even more i recommend avoiding this book altogether.

Content Warnings

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.

Content Warnings

amzmeisterr's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-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

2.75

If you liked The Marriage Plot, try this one.

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

kaimekolreads's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.75

Content Warnings

rhubarbpi3's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-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

2.0

I thought this was well executed and everything I just thought it would be happy but it just made me really sad.

Content Warnings

catsofjune's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-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

I still don't know exactly how much I liked the book, I mostly felt sad reading it. I gave it 4 stars because it was good, which for me is different from liking a book.

Content Warnings