“Not for the first time Marianne thinks 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.”
“Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves.”
This novel follows Connell and Marianne and their complex relationship with each other. Connell is popular while Marianne is a loner. We follow them throughout their lives from high school to college while many themes such as class, love, friendship, and the complexities of family relationships are explored.
Have you ever read a book and it's just your book? You love it so much that you go back to it for comfort, whether its to reread the entire thing or just quotes and passages that you loved. You relate to the characters and their problems, you start to care for them and almost see yourself in them? Normal People is that book for me.
I know there's a lot of mixed reviews about this book. People either love it or hate it. So far, one of the common themes I've seen that people dislike is the "miscommunication"/"if they just spoke to each other then none of this would even happen" trope. And normally, whether in books or movies, the whole miscommunication trope would annoy me too so I completely understand why some people didn't like this book because of that. But its one of the things that made me love this book and the characters so much. I actually thought the author did a great job with executing the miscommunication trope here, especially since we were able to see things from both of the main characters' perspectives.
Emotions are hard, and for some people, expressing themselves can be hard too, especially as a teenager dealing with first love. Connell and Marianne were teenagers experiencing first love, so I didn't expect them to have a deep enough emotional intelligence to be able to communicate their feelings and thoughts very well at that age. I certainly didn't. I was still learning about myself and what love meant to me.
I also love how the author explores pride in this book, because its something I related to on a personal note.
I loved this book and I loved the tv show adaptation as well.
TRAILER FOR NORMAL PEOPLE TV SHOW
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