Essays, Literature & Coffee

I know that Normal People was published in 2018 and the series aired in 2020, but it is relevant to me because I finished the book this week. I have so many thoughts. My first emotion upon ending the book was anger. I am filled with rage for the main character, Marriane. I was told by friends that this was a love story, but I am now sure that my friends have never experienced love. Marriane was bullied at school and physically and verbally abused at home by her brother and mother. She grows up to be a very self-aware person. She knows who she is despite the noise around her. I love that about her character. What I do not like is how she allows men to push her over again and again and again. 

Connel enters the book as a popular highschool student. He is friends with the boys who bully Marriane. His mother works as a housekeeper for Marriane’s family. This is how they connect. Marriane confesses that she likes Connel and, as many highschool boys do, he takes advantage of her kindness and vulnerability. For a long time, they have sex at Connel’s home secretly while pretending not to know each other at school. I think Marriane accepts this because she is lonely and this is the only person who wants to spend time with her even if it is only to use her body. The girls in school are intolerable. It is clear that almost every female in the book is desperate for the validation of men. After using Marriane for sex, Connel decides to ask out another girl to his school’s version of a prom. Marriane, who helped to organize this prom, feels left out and stays home. She stops speaking to Connel (and I wish she never started again).

When they graduate high school and go to the same university, Marriane becomes popular with a big group of friends while Connel struggles to fit in. I loved this part. I wanted Connel’s character to understand how Marriane felt. But Marriane meets Connel again and forgives him immediately. Not long after this, she starts sleeping with him again. Note: I want to state that I love Sally Rooney immensely. She has a beautiful way of building a world. She describes the smallest details and mundane movements of characters and it helps readers understand the characters in a very personal way. I don’t like how many women and young girls, including people close to me, are putting this book on a pedestal like it’s the kind of romance they should aspire to. No one should aspire to being used over and over. Women should look up to characters who walk away, the women who leave, the ones who take control of their lives. 

Back to the book, Connel’s perspective is pathetic to me. He pities Marriane in highschool and wishes he could be a better person and stand up for her but he doesn’t. The thing that really disturbed me about Connell is his understanding that Marriane would do anything for him. He knew that he had power over her and he was reluctant to admit to himself that he was proud of it. He was not self aware in the way Marriane was. Connell is not the only boy who pushes Marriane around. She meets other men at university who treat her badly. Compared to these other men, Connell is prince charming so maybe this explains why Marriane keeps running back to him. I hate how she makes sacrifices for him over and over. Whenever he does the smallest thing for her, it is emphasized, glorified even. Marriane remains in love with Connell for the entire book. She never grows out of it, she never comes to a realization of any kind.

I want to offer an example of the kind of person Marriane is. She forgave her former bully after he committed suicide years after highschool. He was just as horrible to her as everyone else but she held no grudges. “…Marriane thinks cruelty does not only harm the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently.” This is who Marriane is. She has the depth of character to look at the people who hurt her and understand how they also suffer. “You learn nothing about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget.” 

When Connell falls into a depression towards the end of the book, he and Marriane connect in a very deep way. They cling to each other. Connel defends Marriane against her abusive brother and, I presume, this is what all my friends thought made him so protective and romantic. But, I wonder why he couldn’t protect Marriane’s feelings for the many years he had sex with her and never acknowledged her in public? To me, that is among the dehumanising treatment. To strip off your clothes and be naked together and then ignore each other in public. Wouldn’t that make anyone feel unworthy? 

At the end of the book, we see that Marriane will be under Connell’s spell forever. He gets a big opportunity in New York and is reluctant to leave Marriane behind. She tells him to go anyway because she will always be there waiting for him. I dislike this ending so much. Why couldn’t Marriane be the one to get the big opportunity? She is equally as brilliant as Connell. When Connell got his scholarship for the English degree at Trinity, Marriane also got a scholarship. They always had similar marks at the top of the class in highschool. Marriane reads extensively, passes all her subjects and she advocates for the causes she genuinely cares about. Marriane would be a powerhouse on her own. And yet she’s the one who gets left behind all over again in the end while Connell goes to find himself in New York.

Throughut the book, Marriane gives us glimpses of emotional turmoil. She says she wishes that she was like normal people. I wish everyone knew that every single person in the world is going through their own kind of turmoil. Even the happiest people have really bad days. It is, in fact, normal to go through hard things. I wish Marriane discovered that and stopped looking at herself as some kind of social pariah.

We almost got married. I knew I didn’t want to get married and I suspect he knew this too, but we told ourselves that this was the right thing to do. We had to do it just because. When I was younger, I thought that marriage was the chief end of life and I didn’t want to be left behind. Everyone talked to me incessantly about hitting the wall and being the childless cat lady. I feared the future because of the standards society has placed on women. When I broke up with my ex, I spent so many sleepless nights on my friend’s couch thinking that something bad was going to happen to me because I rebelled against the cultural norm. I was scared and sad and secretly excited that my whole world was opening up for me.

But I knew her way back in the day when she loved her long hair and her boyfiend. I knew her when we used to take long walks through the forest to talk about our favorite movies and books. Life felt so simple back then and friendships were so straightforward. To keep friends, you need to make new memories with them. You can’t have the friendships I have where everyone is moving around the world and keeping in touch on zoom. This is how the connections fade into the busy-ness of life. Nia and I have kept up our phone calls, but they have become few and far between with each passing year. I want to be a part of her and she wants to be in mine, but we have no new memories. We recycle memories that we loved from years ago. We trade old secrets and confessions we have already told. I am lost when I hear about her new neighbor or her new colleagues. She is lost when I tell her I have started running.

I sometimes feel left behind because so many people have left our town and I remain here with all the songs and stories and food and memories they gave to me. I went swimming with my friend Jen one day, many years ago, and then we listened to Back to December while we watched the sunset. We talked about how much we wanted to experience love. That was the last time we spent the day together. She left for boarding school and she never really came back. I still take a lot of comfort in that song. I think about her whenever it plays on my phone. It is an automatic thought, the body never forgets.

Perhaps, the most profound memory I have happened with a boy I was half in love with. He didn’t give me any songs to listen to. I wish he had. We talked about our lives together. I remember thinking about how being in love is like one long conversation that pauses but never truly ends. I found solace in our long discussions about our future and our families and friends and hopes and dreams. When he left town I couldn’t tell anyone how heartbroken I was, because he was just a friend and it was a case of unrequited love.