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Book Reviewed by:A wondrous and wise coming-of-age love story from the celebrated author of Conversations with Friends
At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers - one they are determined to conceal.
A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.
Costa Book Awards
2018
Sally Rooney is 27 years old. Her thirst for dialogue and her canny wit has a breezy engagement. She curates the cynical beauty of millennials better than any fiction writer I have read, and it is her greatest instrument as a writer, this tragicomedy oeuvre, that forces you to stay reading after you told yourself you would stop and go to bed...continued
Full Review
(857 words)
(Reviewed by Valerie Morales).
Two decades before I was born, a cousin of mine entered seminary and killed himself within the week. No one in the family discussed it. He was dead. No need to talk about why. But death by suicide has undergone a radical cultural shift. It is no longer absurdly kept secret.
In Sally Rooney's Normal People, Connell fantasizes about killing himself. Despite being a fictional character, many young adults feel exactly as he does, unanchored and more alone than ever. Many enter into soulless relationships, or as they call them, situationships. They are on the same sports team or work in the same office and they hook up. Or they engage in Tinder, Grindr and other apps, which may satiate desire in the short term, but the loose connections leave...
If you liked Normal People, try these:
by Sally Rooney
Published 2025
An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family―but especially love―from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.
Beautiful World, Where Are You
by Sally Rooney
Published 2022
Beautiful World, Where Are You is a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends.
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These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas
"[An] atmospheric tale of unexpected hope." —Lisa Wingate, New York Times bestselling author
Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and The Possessed
I couldn't put Normal People down - I didn't think I could love it as much as Conversations with Friends, but I did. Sally Rooney is a treasure. I can't wait to see what she does next.
