A review by dawndeydusk
Normal People by Sally Rooney

emotional fast-paced

5.0

I watched the show first, and I fell in love. I wrote a blog post about it (no, I'm not kidding). I don't know why these two characters and this story in particular haunts me so. It weaves in and out of my consciousness as the months pass. I can't tell if it's an anchor for me, or the other way around.

For weeks now she has had this feeling, the feeling of moving around inside a protective film, floating like mercury. The outside world touches against her outside skin, but no the other part of herself, inside.
pg. 195

Last night he spent an hour and a half lying on the floor of his room, because he was too tired to complete the journey from his en suite back to his bed. There was the en suite, behind him, and there was the bed, in front of him, both well within view, but somehow it was impossible to move either forward or backward, only downward, onto the floor, until his body was arranged motionless on the carpet. Well, here I am on the floor, he thought. Is life so much worse here than it would be on the bed, or even in a totally different location? No, life is exactly the same. Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head. I might as well be lying here, breathing the vile dust of the carpet into my lungs, gradually feeling my right arm go numb under the weight of my body, because it's essentially the same as every other possible experience.
pg. 208