A review by booksnooksandglory
Normal People by Sally Rooney

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I thought I was reading good books and then I read this. I thought I was okay and I saw a still of the series with a quote.
Content warnings: Physical abuse, child abuse (mention), sexual assault, depression, suicide, toxic relationships, abusive relationship.
I want all the books that fall into the same category as this one. It's definitely not a romance but it's a love story. I'm pretty sure it's literary fiction that explores romance.
I'm kind of rushing this review because I want to go watch the show, I can't part with the characters.
The characters were great, they felt like bone and flesh humans, I don't think I've ever read more realistic and complex characters ever, or at least in a while.
The writing format doesn't make visual cues for the dialogue and non-obvious ones for flashbacks but I had no issue understanding what was happening (I'm dyslexic so visual cues tend to be crucial for me), the writing made it very clear, the flashbacks could be a bit disorienting at first but I think that's the intention and it works to the benefit of the style.
All the flashbacks are placed perfectly to fit the tone and the point of the scene at hand, this seems like a necessary thing but I've never seen it executed in such a precise yet subtle way, am I making sense?
The back of the book mentions it will explore love, sex, power, and friendship but I found that it also explored privilege and how it intertwines with activism, that is not the point nor a theme of the book but the characters are defined by these topics or rather choose to define their personalities with their view on them.
I have no more words but here are some defining quotes (the writing is not one that lends itself to easy and fast quotation but this way you can see themes and style):

· Could he really do the gruesome things he does to her and believe at the same time that he is acting out of love? Is the world such an evil place, that love should be indistinguishable from the basest and most abusive forms of violence?

· She looked like a piece of religious art. It was so much more painful to look at her than anyone had warned him it would be, and he wanted to do something terrible like set himself on fire or drive his car into a tree. 

· His appearance was like a favorite piece of music to her, sounding a little different each time she hears it.

· Cruelty does not only hurt the victim but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied, but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget.

· Marianne wanted her life to mean something then, she wanted to stop all violence committed by the strong against the weak, and she remembered a time several years ago when she felt so intelligent and young and powerful that she almost could have achieved such a thing, and now she knew she wasn't at all powerful, and she would live and die in a world of extreme violence against the innocent, and the most she could help only a few people. It was so much harder to reconcile herself to the idea of helping a few, like she would rather he's no one than do something so small and feeble, but that wasn't it either.
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