Normal People by Sally Rooney—Book Review

 One of the few books everyone should read at least twice in their lives.

“It is one of the secrets in that change of mental poise which has been fitly named conversion, that to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness.”
— George Eliot

I went through all of Sally Rooney’s interviews just to dive deeper into her mind—to understand her perspective beyond the book. Normal People is that kind of novel. If you hold it in your hands at midnight, you’ll find yourself staring at the ceiling, questioning everything you thought you knew about love, power, and the quiet violence of human relationships.

Reading it for the first time, the third-person narration feels distant, like a story told through glass. The novel’s psychological depth, its brutal honesty about class, peer dynamics, and the inevitability of loneliness—these can be overwhelming. If you aren’t in the right headspace, it will pull you under. I wasn’t when I first read it in 2023.

Now, in 2025, I see it differently. Have you ever felt out of place? Out of character, even to yourself? Have you known the ache of being left behind? If yes, pick this book.

Marianne:

Marianne is complex, self-effacing, and filled with contradictions. Her trauma is rooted in her home—the abuse, the neglect, the way she was treated like something fragile, always on the verge of collapse. It made her crave exactly that. She convinced herself she was cold, incapable of love, inherently wrong for not fitting in.

In her suicide note, Virginia Woolf wrote to her husband:

“If anybody could have saved me, it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.”

That’s what Marianne must feel for Connell. He is the only one she talks to. The only one who understands. He holds an infinite amount of power over her—if he asked her to die, she would.

But Marianne, to herself, is Sylvia Plath’s words:

“I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.”

Imagine your brother telling you to kill yourself. 

Imagine your mother dismissing it as dramatics. That was Marianne’s home. She was never loved. So when she found love in Connell, she thought: I will give anything. Be anyone. If it means he stays.

It’s necrotic. It’s freeing. To not belong to yourself, but to another. And when Connell feels just out of reach, she turns to the only thing she knows besides him—pain.

She avoids the outside world because she has too many inside her mind. And then she finds someone just as fractured. Someone who changes her. Makes her believe she could be loved. That hearing I love you is both the beginning of her life and the end of it.

Connell:

Connell is insecure—like most of us. He wants to be normal, to be accepted. To be acknowledged by society, he silences the parts of himself that hold opinions. He’s an empty vessel until Marianne enters his life, breaking him open.

He says, “You can make me do anything.” But that’s bullshit. He already wants to do those things—Marianne just gives voice to the part of him he suppresses. Maybe it started because his friends found her deviant. Maybe that was why he let himself open up to her in the first place. But what began as something degrading evolved into something sacred as he grew into a man.

His depression—the stillness—Marianne breaks through it. When he says, Maybe God made her for me, he means it.

Normal People is also about the terror of being too loved. Connell’s hold on Marianne terrifies him. He doesn’t trust himself with that kind of power. He revels in it, but to hold such authority over another soul makes him ask: What if I break her?

When he thinks he might want to hit her and knows she would let him, it’s not that he actually wants to. It’s the horror of what if? Who would save her then?

He is Sylvia Plath’s:

“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”

Marianne and Connell exist away from others, in a world where only they can heal and destroy each other. It is absolute, undeniable, soul-licking power that binds them as one. And in the end, no matter where Connell goes, Marianne will be on the other side, waiting.

Final Thoughts:

Normal People is about suicide, depression, abuse, identity crises, parasitism, dependency, lust, and acceptance—all of which are normal. They both see each other as sacred. But themselves, as a degradation.

This book is a mirror. The person standing in front of it doesn’t believe they are the reflection. But they are. They are normal, with every deviant thought they have.

If you’ve ever felt like this—or if you know someone who does—just pass along this book. It will leave you aching.

QOTD: How many stars did you rated this book with?🤷🏻‍♀️

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