Normal People by Sally Rooney is a book solely about two individuals and how their lives intertwine so deeply to the point where they are no longer separable by name. “All these years, they’ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, and taking certain unlikely positions.” It follows how they change over time, both together and away from each other. How they come together, then fall apart, and then magnetize for the rest of their lives, whether they choose to or not.
Reading this book was like reading someone’s real life. The sentences were short and to the point, and a lot of times they were so spot-on in capturing a feeling that even if you’ve never experienced a certain kind of heartbreak yourself, you could easily place yourself in the shoes of someone absolutely wrecked by the effects of a simple sentence.
From a literary point of view, the book’s lack of quotation marks around dialogue can be annoying, but honestly, from a more emotional standpoint, I look back on it as a great choice. Every chapter feels raw, like taking a seat in someone’s mind and watching their life unfold. It’s all abrupt and smooth, and sometimes you feel like you don’t fully comprehend a character’s emotions or ambitions, but it’s only because the same way they’re figuring it out, so are you.
The way the book leaves you is so akin to how life is. It takes you on a rollercoaster of moments you don’t have an exact timeline or understanding for, but it’s just the same as if you were to reminisce on parts of your life that made you the person you are—sporadic, barely cohesive memories, but important nonetheless. Then, in the end, you’re waiting for ‘the more’, but it doesn’t come because we have to assume that we know exactly how it’s going to end. It’s a repetitive life; the characters live as boomerangs who only ever return to each other, but it shows us that no matter how many times we reread a book, this time faster than before, or rewatch a show, maybe out of order starting from the last episode and ending with the first, or redo a math equation we got right the first time but this time with a different formula, the end result will always be the same. “She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now, they can never have back again.”
