BOOK OVERVIEW
Connell Waldron is one of the most popular boys in his small-town high school--he is a star of the football team, an excellent student, and never wanting for attention from girls. The one thing he doesn't have is money. Marianne Sheridan, a classmate of Connell's, has the opposite problem. Marianne is plain-looking, odd, and stubborn, and while her family is well-off, she has no friends to speak of. There is, however, a deep and undeniable connection between the two teenagers, one that develops into a secret relationship.
Everything changes when both Connell and Marianne are accepted to Trinity College. Suddenly Marianne is well-liked and elegant, holding court with her intellectual friends while Connell hangs at the sidelines, not quite as fluent in language of the elite. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle each other, falling in and out of romance but never straying far from where they started. And as Marianne experiments with an increasingly dangerous string of boyfriends, Connell must decide how far he is willing to go to save his oldest friend.
Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a novel that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the inescapable challenges of family and friendships. Normal People is a book that you will read in one sitting, and then immediately share with your friends.
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Paperback
Penquin Random House
Published: 02/12/2020
FICTION/Coming of Age
Other Books by Author:
UPC 9780735276499
“Rooney writes like she’s shearing through blue silk with a newly sharpened pair of scissors. . . . Again and again, she hits the perfect phrase and then the ideal restraint. She writes about tricky commonplace things (text messages, sex) with a familiarity no one else has. She is a puer senex, and I hope the spell holds.” —The Paris Review
“Like other zeitgeist novels . . . Normal People has trapped a moment—in this case, our new sense of collective precariousness—whether individual, economic or political. . . . It is the first novel I have read that has convincingly captured what it is to be young today: often overeducated, neurotic, slightly too self-aware.”—The Guardian
“A trailblazing novel about modern life and love that will electrify any reader.” —Costal Novel Award jury citation
“Sally Rooney's Normal People is the deeply felt story of a foundational relationship at the margin of friendship and true love, of shame and devotion. This inventive and profound novel proves what great fiction can do—it can open a world at the seams.” —Emma Straub, author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers
“I couldn’t put Normal People down—I didn’t think I could love it as much as Conversations with Friends, but I did. Sally Rooney is a treasure. I can’t wait to see what she does next.” —Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and The Possessed