A review by frogwithlittlehammer
Normal People by Sally Rooney

emotional reflective

3.75

Really this is startlingly boring compared to how much I enjoy Conversations with Friends and Beautiful World, Where Are You. Stilted writing, yeah, but still, great content. 

I really felt the power dynamics between class and love were well explored, portraying how pulling ahead in one does not guarantee your security in the other. It makes me think about Rooney’s quip about love in her (superior) debut novel, something like, “love is the discursive practice, unpaid labor is the effect.” Which had me overall reflecting about how frustrated I can get in relationships, where the subject of wealth is ignored because love is this supposed equalizer. I suppose for people like myself,  who grew up having to think about money, it’s instinctual to offer up gestures of love to replace the objects of material value, and if eventually we are privileged (yuck I know) enough to afford the later, we are more liberal with this as well. Eventually, when you realize love is exploited as emotional labor in almost all parties of life, these habits are shed from the more sensitive folks. But for all of my friends who grew up comfortably, there has always existed a large degree of  transactionality in our relationships, and I find that material generosity does not arrear until disparity is explicitly discussed (sorry I guess to my rich friends who are reading this.) And even further, this responsibility to have “The Talk” is always delegated to the person of lower class status—because how uncool is it for a rich person to personally acknowledge they are one. The scene where Connell goes home for the summer instead of asking Marianne if he can move in, was such a genius and poignant representation of this dynamic. The frustration in the other’s failing to offer, the powerlessness of love, the feelings of inferiority because of lack. 

There is no doubt that I am interested in money in the same way I am interested in love. They are both seductive in their incomprehension, irrationality, and fictitious nature. There’s a quote by Francois La Rouchefoucald that says, “There are people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard love talked about.” For me, the same thing applies to the amassing of wealth; it is that much of an inane concept.

But where the novel falls flat in it’s unrealistic dialogue and characters you want to shake straight, it compensates by depicting the difficult and irreplaceable transition one ensues when finally opening yourself up to someone who understands the raw you. The sad truth of it is, many people will live their lives without ever experiencing such closeness. And the sadder truth is, for those who do, that relationship will often not survive this baring of flesh and soul. It’s both ugly and beautiful to see someone so harshly bare, probably even sublime. Rooney explores this expertly. I know a common criticism of Normal People is how everything would have been fixed if Connell and Marianne would have only spoken to each other. But when words will never be able to adequately express what you ontologically understand of another person, what means do we possess, if any, to overcome this dissonance?

Okay so this review really digressed from being a review, but, in the end, I devoured the book in the hopes of finding some new sense of redemption in the arc of Connell and Marianne’s relationship. I think whether that happens or not is individual to every reader, which is kind of a nice thing.