A review by kjboldon
Normal People, by Sally Rooney
1.0
I reserved this book from the library after I read a GLOWING review at Entertainment Weekly. I have no idea how many weeks I waited for it, but it was many; this is a popular book. Before I read it, though, a friend I trust told me she'd hated it and would be interested to know what I thought. When it finally came in from the library, I began it and I also disliked it, but I continued to read, determined to figure out exactly WHY I was not engaging with this novel and its author, both of which have garnered an outrageous amount of fawning praise. Here, then, is my best attempt to tell you exactly why I am giving this book one star, because, reader, I DID NOT LIKE IT.
1. The characters. Two bookish teens, Marianne and Connell, trade chapters and points of view. The problem is, their interior voices sound remarkably similar, and the major thing that distinguishes them is the details that the narrator tells us: Connell is poor because his single mother is a cleaning person, and Marianne is rich because her single mother is a lawyer. C's mom is nice; M's is not. Exactly zero of the supporting characters achieve more than two dimensions. Like the moms, they are either Nice or Not. The distinguishing characteristics for even the main characters tend to be binary (rich/not), not convincingly detailed (C works, but we are never shown his garage job), and set up as convenient props for the next problem I have, which is
2. The structure. Over the book, the balance of power between the two shifts. First, C is a popular football player and M is a social outcast. They begin sleeping together, but C wants it a secret, eventually asking out a popular girl to the year-end dance. (Does this sound like the plot of a Sweet Valley High novel, because it felt like it to me.) Then, they go to university and M is well liked and popular, while C is an outcast, ostensibly because his is poor (because this book is about CLASS and other serious themes, people) but really because he's anxious and shy. The book continues to trade the power between them, with one up while one is down, so often that it felt like exactly what it was: authorial intrusion rather than believable shifts in life change. Worse, M is revealed to have been physically and emotionally abused by her parents and brother over her life. She reveals this to C early on, he conveniently forgets this. She engages in a number of abusive relationships, with men and friends, so while C's mental illnesses of depression and anxiety worsen at convenient times for him to take the power loss chapters, M still has this horrible trauma from childhood that is never addressed and only grows worse, in addition to being forgotten and taken lightly by C until the end of the novel, which is disturbing because
3. This romance sucks. We are supposed to be rooting for M and C to get together, why? Their sex is often portrayed with a lack of overt consent that I found disappointing in this age. Consent is sexy! Write it in there! No need for characters to guess what the other person is thinking; just ask! Not that hard! Again and again, C does something shitty to M, like asking the mean girl to the dance, denying and constantly denying they're seeing one another. There are a few times when M is thoughtless to C, especially around issues of money, but these nearly always felt contrived, in slave to the author's need to have the power dynamic between the two seesaw, and to have them constantly getting together and breaking up, which became tedious. Speaking of tedious...
4. The prose. There were numerous scenes where we got a play by play of someone doing the dishes, only as a tool to intersperse the dialogue with. There was also a lot of text give over to M's lipstick and whether she was wearing it, and how it looked throughout the scene. These details added nothing to the plot or character. There was one sentence that said something like he sighed but drew in his breath and somehow made it sound like a sigh, another where a sheet covered M's body and cast a purple triangle shadow. I'm not going to look them up because, frankly, I'm tired of this book, but please trust me that they were not great writing. There was some howlingly bad dialogue, too. C often says, Hm. Also, toward the end, he has a stiff line in which he states that he feels anxiety. Again, I am already taking a long time with this negative reviews, so I am not going to quote directly and engage more with a book I found so tiresome, but trust me; it's in there. Some examples I did find easy to locate were:
5. The metaphors and similes. "The quiet kiss of the chalk against the smooth surface of the cue ball." Sorry, that's not how I kiss. "The sky is a thrilling chlorine blue, stretched taut and featureless like silk." This is dinner, so would the sky be blue? And, chlorine gas is yellow green, not blue like a pool, which is what I think she's trying to say. In any case, the whole sentence had me wrinkling my face in distaste which I also did with
6. M's ongoing abuse by others. The descriptions of the abuse and degradations she endured were more than was necessary to convey this poor girl's pain, which goes on until the end of the book. I was wondering if she would actually die, like the female main character in another overhyped supposed romance from a few years back, One Day.
In conclusion, for all the accolades and acclaim this book has won, I found it a poorly written, under-characterized novel about an unconvincing romance in which the female character endures a great deal of often painfully detailed physical and emotional abuse. There are better books out there; seek them out.
1. The characters. Two bookish teens, Marianne and Connell, trade chapters and points of view. The problem is, their interior voices sound remarkably similar, and the major thing that distinguishes them is the details that the narrator tells us: Connell is poor because his single mother is a cleaning person, and Marianne is rich because her single mother is a lawyer. C's mom is nice; M's is not. Exactly zero of the supporting characters achieve more than two dimensions. Like the moms, they are either Nice or Not. The distinguishing characteristics for even the main characters tend to be binary (rich/not), not convincingly detailed (C works, but we are never shown his garage job), and set up as convenient props for the next problem I have, which is
2. The structure. Over the book, the balance of power between the two shifts. First, C is a popular football player and M is a social outcast. They begin sleeping together, but C wants it a secret, eventually asking out a popular girl to the year-end dance. (Does this sound like the plot of a Sweet Valley High novel, because it felt like it to me.) Then, they go to university and M is well liked and popular, while C is an outcast, ostensibly because his is poor (because this book is about CLASS and other serious themes, people) but really because he's anxious and shy. The book continues to trade the power between them, with one up while one is down, so often that it felt like exactly what it was: authorial intrusion rather than believable shifts in life change. Worse, M is revealed to have been physically and emotionally abused by her parents and brother over her life. She reveals this to C early on, he conveniently forgets this. She engages in a number of abusive relationships, with men and friends, so while C's mental illnesses of depression and anxiety worsen at convenient times for him to take the power loss chapters, M still has this horrible trauma from childhood that is never addressed and only grows worse, in addition to being forgotten and taken lightly by C until the end of the novel, which is disturbing because
3. This romance sucks. We are supposed to be rooting for M and C to get together, why? Their sex is often portrayed with a lack of overt consent that I found disappointing in this age. Consent is sexy! Write it in there! No need for characters to guess what the other person is thinking; just ask! Not that hard! Again and again, C does something shitty to M, like asking the mean girl to the dance, denying and constantly denying they're seeing one another. There are a few times when M is thoughtless to C, especially around issues of money, but these nearly always felt contrived, in slave to the author's need to have the power dynamic between the two seesaw, and to have them constantly getting together and breaking up, which became tedious. Speaking of tedious...
4. The prose. There were numerous scenes where we got a play by play of someone doing the dishes, only as a tool to intersperse the dialogue with. There was also a lot of text give over to M's lipstick and whether she was wearing it, and how it looked throughout the scene. These details added nothing to the plot or character. There was one sentence that said something like he sighed but drew in his breath and somehow made it sound like a sigh, another where a sheet covered M's body and cast a purple triangle shadow. I'm not going to look them up because, frankly, I'm tired of this book, but please trust me that they were not great writing. There was some howlingly bad dialogue, too. C often says, Hm. Also, toward the end, he has a stiff line in which he states that he feels anxiety. Again, I am already taking a long time with this negative reviews, so I am not going to quote directly and engage more with a book I found so tiresome, but trust me; it's in there. Some examples I did find easy to locate were:
5. The metaphors and similes. "The quiet kiss of the chalk against the smooth surface of the cue ball." Sorry, that's not how I kiss. "The sky is a thrilling chlorine blue, stretched taut and featureless like silk." This is dinner, so would the sky be blue? And, chlorine gas is yellow green, not blue like a pool, which is what I think she's trying to say. In any case, the whole sentence had me wrinkling my face in distaste which I also did with
6. M's ongoing abuse by others. The descriptions of the abuse and degradations she endured were more than was necessary to convey this poor girl's pain, which goes on until the end of the book. I was wondering if she would actually die, like the female main character in another overhyped supposed romance from a few years back, One Day.
In conclusion, for all the accolades and acclaim this book has won, I found it a poorly written, under-characterized novel about an unconvincing romance in which the female character endures a great deal of often painfully detailed physical and emotional abuse. There are better books out there; seek them out.