Maine Irish Reads

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation–awkward but electrifying–something life-changing begins.

A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. As she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.

“[Rooney] has invented a sensibility entirely of her own: sunny and sharp, free of artifice but overflowing with wisdom and intensity. . . . The novel touches on class, politics, and power dynamics and brims with the sparky, witty conversation that Rooney’s fans will recognize.” Vogue

Rooney is a tough girl; her papercut-sharp sensibility is much more akin to writers like Rachel Kushner, Mary Gaitskill, and the pre-Manhattan Beach Jennifer Egan . . . . Normal People is a nuanced and flinty love story about two young people who ‘get’ each other, despite class differences and the interference of their own vigorous personal demons. But honestly, Sally Rooney could write a novel about bath mats and I’d still read it. She’s that good and that singular a writer.” –Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“[Rooney] has written two fresh and accessible novels. . . . There is so much to say about Rooney’s fiction–in my experience when people who’ve read her meet, they tend to peel off into corners to talk.” –Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“[Rooney’s] two carefully observed and gentle comedies of manners . . . are tender portraits of Irish college students. . . . Remarkably precise–she captures meticulously the way a generation raised on social data thinks and talks .”–New York Review of Books

NEXT THREE BOOKS

Watching the Door: Drinking Up, Getting Down, and Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast by Kevin Myers

Love by Roddy Doyle

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne