But, her family is careless and abusive, and this has a profound impact on her self-esteem, as well as her romantic relationships and friendships. Marianne comes from an upper-middle-class background, which allowed her to grow up with all the economic privileges that come with it. Social class and family are important features in Sally Rooney’s novels too: her characters are explicitly the product of their upbringing and Normal People is no exception to that. Their differing personalities and backgrounds affect the way they act and take decisions, which sometimes can pull them quite far apart, but it eventually results in making them realise how complementary they’ve become to each other. As time goes by, the courses of their own lives and their attempts as a couple shape Marianne and Connell’s personas. The novel has many notable aspects: character development and the experience of growing up are undoubtedly the foundations of the plot. But, the only certainty in the lives of both is that they’ll always be there for each other. On the other hand, Connell finds it difficult to fit in and feels like a fish out of water. Now, Marianne has lots of friends, she’s charming and attractive but can’t build any healthy connections.

The two meet, fancy each other, and life runs its course: school ends and both decide to attend the same university in Dublin, and it’s at this point that an overturning of roles happens. While, Connell is popular and well-liked, even if he doesn’t make any true, meaningful friendships. At the beginning of the book, Marianne doesn’t have any friends – at school, everybody avoids and bullies her. The narration follows what happens to them over the span of four years, from January 2011 to February 2015. Normal People is, after all, a simple story: the protagonists are two young people, Connell and Marianne, who live in a small town in Ireland and meet in the last year of high school. Also, as often happens when a piece of work is so widely popular, Normal People has proved very divisive – people either praise it or tear it down.

Normal People, written by Sally Rooney, could be considered the typical bestseller and it’s preceded by its on-screen fame.

Normal people book review