Thankfully, one expression rarely heard anymore is “chick lit.” It was used to disparage novels thought to be written for women, in which the central question is whether the girl will get the guy, the presumption being that, if we’re going to bother to read, the story better be about romance (and, possibly, shopping). In Sally Rooney’s lovely, subdued novel, Normal People, the relationship between Marianne and Connell is central, but, as in much other fiction in which a romantic relationship is central to the story, it is about so much more.
Marianne and Connell are classmates in a small town in Sligo, but theirs is a more complicated relationship, because Connell’s mother, whose wit is so dry it is like a desert, is Marianne’s family’s housekeeper. Marianne does not fit in at their small high school: she argues with the teachers about politics, reads novels alone at lunch, and seems unconcerned with the opinions of her peers. Connell is well-liked: he plays soccer, dates the cool girls, and knows how to please without drawing too much attention to himself. But when Marianne very frankly tells Connell that she likes him, they start having sex in secret, with all the hurt feelings that always go along with that arrangement.
So begins a friendship and romance of years, told cleverly by Rooney through jumps ahead in time, from a few weeks to many months (and, in one tension-filled scene, just five minutes). While we learn some of what went on in the interim through the characters’ recollections, what is not explicitly told remains fuzzy, a fitting analogue for the way in which our memories of young adulthood begin to fade as we grow up.
Normal People begins in 2011 and ends in 2014, and it is a novel squarely set in this time, from a Kanye West album playing at a party to Marianne and Connell’s friends-with-benefits relationship that baffles the older generation. (At one point, Connell’s mother expresses shock that they are having sex but Marianne is not considered Connell’s girlfriend. My sentiments exactly, Lorraine). Rooney’s characters talk about the Gaza strip at parties, earnestly advocate for socialism in a way that only privileged college kids can, and self-consciously evaluate their own biases when it comes to gender and class. They are both intensely interested in world events but simultaneously fascinated by how their interest in world events appears to their friends. Rooney’s understated style, and her anguished depiction of the mental gymnastics Marianne and Connell go through as they develop into adults, rightfully brings the question of “will they or won’t they?” into pride of place. After all, relationships are central to all of our lives, and they enrich our experience of life. Why should it be any different in fiction?
