Normal People

 

Normal People, we are repeatedly told, is a bestseller: one of those books to be found piled many copies deep on the front table in every bookshop I went into at Christmas. The Kindle edition of the book states that the title is “Normal People: one million copies sold”, which I found remarkable, given the quality of the writing, until it was pointed out by my more worldly-wise daughter that there is also a highly successful TV series, and people are most likely to know the book from watching the TV version. Perhaps a million people watched it, and then some bought the book.  

Having read the book, and watched the first episode of the TV 12-part series, it makes sense to think of the book as the book to accompany the TV series, rather than the other way round. The story makes for great TV, since the book is almost entirely dialogue; any attempts by the author to provide description are pretty ham-fisted and make it clear she is best sticking to speech. There is little attempt to describe a locality, a season, or any background other than in the most sketchy way. Ms Rooney won’t win any prizes for the following: 

The cherries hang around them gleaming like so many spectral planets. The air is light with scent, green like chlorophyll. They sell chlorophyll chewing gum in Europe, Connell has noticed. Overhead the sky is velvet-blue. Stars flicker and cast no light.  (p.185)

1.    Even if the vast sales of the book were to an extent caused by the TV series, there must be something distinctive about the book. I can think of a few reasons that make it stand out:

• We all love a love story, and this is the Mills and Boon style of writing: young clever woman falls in love with the cleverest boy in the class, who scores the winning goal in the school football match (switched to Irish football in the TV version). After many vicissitudes, and scholarships, they end up truly in love, albeit to be separated for a year, an odd twist.
• The narrative replicates Pride and Prejudice (and how we all love that plot): Connell is Darcy, well-bred, but in one respect behaving very strangely: by not recognizing his sexual partner in public, he places her in an impossible position. His mother points this out to him, but he refuses to acknowledge his appalling behaviour. Again, the TV version makes this far more explicit. 
• Relationships as a form of dependency: Marianne gets involved in sado-masochistic relationships, and even without any physical violence, at the end she states “She was in his power, he had chosen to redeem her, she was redeemed”. Perhaps, the suggestion is, that we are either dominant or dependent in any relationship – hardly a me-too message.
• Up to date: lots of mentions of texting, references to posting nude photos on your phone, and so on. The recency (even if the novel is set in 2013-2014) is entertaining.
• Obsession with self: you could describe this novel, not as “me too”, but as “me me”. The two main characters in the novel, Connell and Marianne, are both preoccupied largely with themselves – even at the expense of a would-be partner staring them in the face. Both are academically gifted, gaining scholarships at Trinity College, Dublin – but what are they studying? You could be forgiven for not noticing. There is a mention of a dissertation she is writing on “Irish carceral institutions after independence”, but no mention of this subject anywhere else in the book. This is a novel of emotions only: no outside world exists.  Marianne is criticised for being “self-absorbed” when she talks about the political situation in Israel – Connell defends her, but there is no mention of Israel anywhere else in the book. It seems pretty clear that Marianne and Connell do not discuss the political situation in their conversations, even if Connell states it is “fairly important” (p173). If you compare this novel with, say, Balzac, you would notice that Balzac’s characters interact with the world far more than with themselves.  Perhaps the lack of interest in the world around is what the readers of Normal People like: an escape. 

But there remain several things that didn't impress me:

• Characters in the novel as obsessed with being “normal”: “What they had together was normal, a good relationship. The life they were living was the right life.” (p175) Is it likely that such highly educated characters would have such a simplistic idea of what is normal? Of course, the title “normal people” is ironic, but does anyone really care about being normal?
• The simplistic view of good and evil: “She tries to be a good person. But deep down she knows she is a bad person, corrupted, wrong” (p246). “He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her.” (p273) Such statements are unbelievable and glib. Mercifully, they are of course eliminated in the TV version, which removes any self-analysis, greatly improving the work in the process.
• The endless dialogue, punctuated only by the elementary trick of some activity, such as eating an ice cream, getting dressed, or washing up.
• Connell seems to find a solution to his life through creative writing, but we never find out what he writes about. I somehow think that what he writes will be more navel gazing. Creative writing as the answer to life’s problems! By the end of the novel, neither Connell nor Marianne has ever done anything other than attended funded courses. You could write a sequel, but I don’t think many readers would be interested. Connell and Marianne have a baby, perhaps? It seems to unlikely that you realise how confined a space is the world of this novel: almost like an American high-school movie. 

A comparison with the Hollywood high-school genre is perhaps apt. Characters in high-school movies such as Booksmart learn to overcome social pressures to conform, and succeed in forming what for Hollywood at least are "normal" relationships (traditionally boy-girl, nowadays slightly expanded to include same-sex relationships, but the principle remains the same). Perhaps that's what the "normal" in Normal People means.