Why it’s essential
With her sophomore novel, a story about first love, intimacy, and gender and class dynamics, Sally Rooney cemented her reputation as the first great novelist of the millennial generation.
Featured in The top 100 screen adaptations of all time.
What is Normal People about?
Normal People follows the troubled yet ultimately life-transforming relationship between the brilliant, woefully misunderstood Marianne and Connell, the son of her family's housecleaner.
Editor’s review
Mysia is a book person who loves escaping into twisty mysteries and contemporary fiction driven by complicated characters.
A few summers ago, I was dealing with an illness in my family, feeling unsettled, and longing to travel to a magical land of greener pastures and shamrocks. I became obsessed with listening to books set in Ireland and performed by Irish narrators, which led me to Aoife McMahon and Conversations with Friends. And that’s how I discovered Sally Rooney, the outstanding Irish novelist. The way Rooney writes about insecure, impulsive, and searching young people who get caught up in tormented relationships is so real and raw. It’s impossible not to feel for her characters—even when they make you want to scream, "What were you thinking?" And especially when what they’ve done or endured or lost makes you cry.
I’ve read all three of Rooney’s novels, which are all brilliantly narrated by McMahon, and characters in each, particularly Frances in Conversations with Friends and Alice in Beautiful World, Where Are You, have stayed with me. Yet none of Rooney’s characters has affected me as powerfully as the beautiful, intelligent, wounded Marianne in Normal People.
When the novel opens, we meet Marianne Sheridan hanging out at her mansion of a home in the (fictional) small town of Carricklea in Sligo County. Soon, the doorbell rings, and we meet Connell Waldron, who has arrived to pick up his mother, Lorraine, the Sheridan family’s housecleaner. Aside from going to the same secondary school, Marianne and Connell have nothing in common. He’s popular, athletic, and well-liked; she’s a loner and everyone thinks she’s "weird." Yet, as Marianne sits at her kitchen counter snacking on chocolate spread straight from the jar, Connell confides an embarrassing encounter at school and finds this odd girl wonderfully easy to talk to. Despite their differences and social tangles, Marianne and Connell form a close bond, strengthened by their shared passion for good books and great writing, and start sleeping together.
Though Connell admires Marianne’s mind and body, he insists on keeping their relationship a secret. Marianne goes along because she can hardly believe that Connell is interested in her—but she's crushed when he asks a popular girl to the Debs, an end-of-year school dance, instead of her. When Lorraine tells her son that she is ashamed of him, Connell takes it to heart. Still, he can’t bring himself to reach out to Marianne and try to make amends.
A year later, they meet again—on the campus of Trinity College Dublin, where, before he hurt her, Marianne had encouraged the reluctant Connell to apply and hone his talent for writing. Now, Marianne is the cool one, celebrated for her keen intellect and daring, and Connell is left grappling to make friends and find his place. While the spark between them remains, they are wary of rekindling their relationship.
Normal People follows Marianne and Connell as they come of age, growing in self-awareness and emotional maturity around one another. Throughout their university years, they have an on-again, off-again relationship, complicated by their frequent miscommunication and inability to be honest with each other—or themselves. To aggravate matters, Marianne feels as if she doesn’t deserve to be loved, which makes her vulnerable to being mistreated by men. As we gradually learn, Marianne is no stranger to abuse—her father, who died when she was 13, hit both her and her mother; her older brother, Alan, is a violent bully; and her mother, rather than defend and protect her, is icy and disdainful. Raised by a loving but firm and pragmatic single mom, Connell (despite his shameful behavior in secondary school) is the first man who treats Marianne with tenderness and respect. Still, he has demons of his own, including nagging questions about the identity of his father, and battles depression.
Though Normal People centers on young love, it explores issues—class, gender, intimacy, power dynamics, and family dysfunction among them—relatable to readers of all ages. As the novel progresses, Marianne and Connell come to love one another, deeply and fully. But don't expect a conventional happily-ever-after ending. With her gift for writing about real relationships, with all their joy and pain, conflicts and uncertainty, Sally Rooney leaves us wondering about her characters’ future as a couple but also knowing that, whatever happens, Marianne and Connell will both be fine because they’ve each made the other a better person.
Did you know?
As a teenager, Sally Rooney participated in a writing group hosted by an arts center and completed a novel at age 15. Though she later disparaged her early writing efforts, Rooney has acknowledged that common threads link her past work with her successful novels. Her second novel, Normal People grew out of characters in her 2016 short story, "At the Clinic."
What listeners said
"Sally Rooney manages to capture the enormity of life and the complexities of relationship in a tender tale that is simultaneously personally intimate and universally relatable." –Benjamin, Audible listener
"Heart-wrenchingly beautiful ... will have you hooked and feeling everything the characters are feeling. I highly recommend this to any normal human." –Nisma, Audible listener
"Riveting and binge-worthy! The writing was exquisite and I found myself on edge feeling for the two main characters. Well done! Impeccable narration. The best." –Chococat, Audible listener
"I loved the story. It was so refreshing that it did not follow the typical boy meets girl story. It was real life; it was messy in all the right ways. I do want a follow-up though." –Danielle, Audible listener
Quotes from Normal People
"No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not."
"Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it."
"Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves."
"All these years, they’ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions."
"She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her."
"Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything."
Adaptations
In 2020, Normal People was adapted into a 12-part television miniseries for Hulu and BBC Three. The young Irish cast was helmed by Daisy Edgar-Jones as Marianne and Paul Mescal, making his onscreen debut, as Connell. Sally Rooney served as executive producer and, with Alice Birch, writer. The show was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Lead Actor, Outstanding Directing, and Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series.
About the author
Sally Rooney is an Irish author and screenwriter. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, and The London Review of Books. In 2017, she was recognized as the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year for her debut novel, Conversations with Friends. Her second novel, Normal People was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the British Book Award, the Costa Book Award, and Irish Novel of the Year. Her third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You was an instant New York Times and global bestseller, and the Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Best Fiction 2021. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Rooney served as editor of the Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly and was a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. She lives in Castlebar, County Mayo, where she was born in 1991 and grew up.
About the performer
Aoife McMahon is an Irish actress, voiceover artist, and writer. Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she has appeared in leading roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Young Vic, Royal Court, and the Abbey in Dublin. She has also appeared in numerous celebrated television roles on both sides of the Atlantic and was awarded the Canadian Gemini Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. A prolific narrator, she has performed more than 200 audiobooks, including all of Sally Rooney’s novels and the entire Cormac Reilly series by Dervla McTiernan. Her recent accolades include numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and a place in the Top Ten audiobooks as listed in The Irish Times, The New York Times, and Amazon's top picks.
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