Sally Rooney, Normal People

- What an amazing novel this is. An utterly absorbing and captivating read by a 27 year old young woman. I can't recommend it enough.
- It's a very contemporary love story. The intricacies and subtleties of the complex relationship between the young millennials Marianne and Connell from a country town in the west of Ireland are superbly captured. And the interplay with their school and university friends provides a rich portrayal of a country in the grip of recession and austerity. 
- The narrative leaves no reflection, emotion, or action unexplained - it comes a few pages later, mostly after the event. The reader is never stranded, which is immensely satisfying. We follow the couple and their friends over a four year period, dipping in every few months or so.
- There’s something immature about Marianne and Connell - Connell in particular. Their relationship difficulties come from an inability to clearly communicate and articulate their feelings, although they are both highly intelligent and scholarship winning students. Their relationship is constantly on and off. A boy from the working class and a girl from a rich family. But they share deep social anxieties bordering on depression.
- There is a strong hint of child abuse in both families. Domestic violence is a thread, particularly for Marianne. It slowly becomes evident that violence is a defining dimension of her. She attracts it, she wants it, she seems to need it. ‘...the evil part of herself’. ‘Marianne is a masochist and Connell is simply too nice a guy to hit a woman’. 
- I was expecting a different, more tragic and shocking ending such as a suicide. But on reflection what Rooney does is more thoughtful and right.   
- In a recent review in the New Yorker, Alexandra Schwartz reflects on a 'curious feeling that Rooney wasn't always sure where she was going but that she trusted herself to find out'. And this captures the essence of Rooney's bare and honest writing style: 'She writes with a rare, thrilling confidence, in a lucid and exacting style uncluttered with the sort of steroidal imagery and strobe flashes of figurative language that so many dutifully literate novelists employ'. 

This piece in the Guardian captures the extraordinary enthusiasm of critics for Rooney: 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/01/sally-rooney-normal-people-man-booker-prize-2018-longlist