A Modern Love Story by the Young Irish Writer Everyone Is Talking About

‘Normal People,” Sally Rooney’s highly anticipated second novel, tells the story of a relationship complicated on several levels, from the realpolitik of high school to the subtle divisions of class in small towns. Though Connell’s mom cleans Marianne’s house for a living, it is Marianne who is disliked at school: she is just outwardly content enough not to need a group of her own. Connell is comfortable enough in his social group, though he is far from any kind of charismatic leader; his place is solidified more by virtue of his simply having always been a part of it, a characteristic he doesn’t realize until he’s older. From the beginning, Connell and Marianne’s mutual attraction isn’t allowed to bloom temperately under the alternately hot and cool eyes of their peers — or at least, that’s how the two of them feel. 

Instead of being sectioned off into neat chapters, “Normal People” is a supercut of both the pivotal and the quiet moments that make up Marianne and Connell’s relationship. In time jumps that range from minutes to months, we watch as Connell and Marianne grow close, diverge after some high school boy-girl drama that is no less affecting for its familiarity and then reconnect in university when it seems they have switched places. Marianne has found her niche, and Connell is feeling lost. 

Rooney is equally invested in both Marianne’s and Connell’s insecurities, allowing the reader to experience secondhand embarrassment for both of them. But she doesn’t write just about their various growing pains. Her time-hopping narrative strategy perfectly showcases her talent for describing the tiniest moments of serenity — or mundanity, depending on your point of view — that make up a person’s life. She’s uncannily adept at vivifying social dynamics with simple sketches. 

The sexual relationships in the book are arguably less relatable than those of her first novel, “Conversations with Friends.” A turn that Marianne and Connell’s relationship takes toward the end has proved off-putting to some readers, and for understandable reasons. It is hinted that Marianne’s sexual proclivities stem in part from gendered social dynamics in her childhood and adolescence, but while the evidence might not be as prevalent as one could hope, the vulnerability is. 

While certain aspects of Rooney’s stories — namely, her ability to capture nuances in conversations over text and email — have rapidly earned her a place as a great millennial novelist, that reputation was almost too rapidly hefted onto her shoulders, for reasons more shallow than she deserves.  She is a great novelist who has conceptualized a new kind of comedy of manners; her ability to communicate nuances in correspondence over the internet is only a small part of her forte. Like “Conversations with Friends,” “Normal People” is by turns sweetly and shrewdly written; Rooney has a gift for revealing human foibles in a way that is simultaneously empathetic, unforgiving and tenderly funny.