Normal People starts out beautifully. Marianne is a loner in high school with no friends, while Connell is the popular football player. His mom works as a cleaner at Marianne's house, so they run into each other when he stops by to pick up his mom. Over time, they start to thaw around each other, growing closer as they realize that they can be their true selves when they are together.Rooney captures so well the vulnerability and awkwardness of teenage years, along with its exuberance and infinit...

EDIT: I get it. This novel is very popular and much beloved. While I recognise that Rooney has talent, I did not vibe with NP. Please, if you hate reading reviews expressing opinions/takes/impressions from your own, well, I suggest you skip this review. There are plenty of glowing reviews out there for this novel so there really is no need for you to waste your time leaving me a comment along the lines of 'you are wrong and here's why'. Also, note that I wrote this review in 2018 and not recentl...

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. This is going to be a polarizing book. I mean, I think I liked it. And I say "liked it" in the sense that it made me very miserable. It is a quiet character study, almost a YA novel but not quite, and it is a profoundly lonely and depressing love story.I didn't begin by liking it. Normal Peo

Sally Rooney is the real dealNormal People has been lavished with praise from critics, longlisted for the Man Booker prize and adapted for television by the BBC. And that's just in its first week of publication! All that attention will, no doubt, attract quite a few readers who would not ordinarily touch this subject with a barge pole. Because this book:A) Is about young peopleB) Is a love story (but not a 'romance novel')C) Contains a fair bit of sex (which is crucial to the storytelling, btw,

I am not sure how to write this review because I seem to be so far beyond the pale on my antipathy to this book. In simplest terms I didn't connect with this work at all and I would be best to chalk this up to a "reader/writer" mismatch and move on but I will try and articulate some of my reading experience.Some of my perplexity with Normal People is that I just couldn't relate to the twenty something, highly educated, politically aware and cynical young adults that populate this novel. I am not...

wow. one of the most frustrating, but humanising, books i have read in a long time. for sure. i feel so exhausted after reading this, but i think that may have been the authors intent. its shows that normal people living normal lives can be quite tiresome. for example:- the writing lacks quotation marks, which makes the dialogue difficult to decipher. which could be seen as support for the idea that life is just as messy as the books formatting and communication sometimes takes effort to underst...

The book aims to hit emotional poignancy by showing how people weave in and out of your life and exploring themes of first love, class differences, and depression; but ultimately the narrative boils down to two co-dependent people hooking up throughout the years, which doesn't really add anything new. Turn to your social circle IRL and you'll find the same story.

Started reading at 11pm while on an evening shift at work. Drove home at midnight, arrived at 00:40. Got into bed and kept reading, finished at 04:15. I’m kicking myself for ruining the next day but do I regret it? Absolutely not.

“Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.”The first time I read this, I rated it three stars. While this can be considered relatively high for me (don’t check my average rating, it will only bring despair to us both), it is approximately two stars lower than what I expected to rate this book.I adore Rooney’s prior novel, Conversations with Friends, to a degree that is almost disturbing. Or possibly just disturbing.But this one fell flat for me. In a way that was difficult, at the

4,5 ⭐this love - taylor swift.

What?! The.... what?! 😬😬😬😬 This book has been very publicized with the new Hulu adaptation and all. I for one, was looking forward to reading this one. Along with everyone else (judging by how long I waited in the library queue😡). Sadly, it didn’t live up to the hype for me. ☹️These characters were not likable. They both have clear issues, but I’ve read plenty of books where the characters are flawed but you still root for them in the end. And don’t even get me started on the ending. 🙄

I had been influenced by a friend - whom I adore & respect - by her 1 star review.... way before this book started gaining momentum and hit the stores a month ago. This book wasn’t for my friend - but it sure was for me. I’ve own an ‘Advance Reader’s Edition’, of Sally Rooney’s paper copy for a year and a half. It sat on my shelf, unread. Rooney’s first novel “Conversations With Friends”, was wonderful. I admit having a thing for the type of writer Sally Rooney is:*Addicting* thought-provoking r...

On the second page of Sally Rooney’s universally acclaimed, Booker- longlisted novel is the following paragraph:‘He puts his hands in his pockets and suppresses an irritable sigh, but suppresses it with an audible intake of breath, so that it still sounds like a sigh.’What?I get the hand in the pockets bit, but how the hell does the rest of it work? A sigh is an exhalation and I have no idea how any attempt to suppress a sigh by inhaling could possibly sound like one. I’ve tried hard to imagine

Man booker prize long list nominee and Costa book awards nominee This is a book that has many admirers and sadly it didn't work for me and while I would love to agree with all the judges on this one I only struggled to the end because it was a bookclub read. It is difficult to go against the grain on a book that is nominated for so many awards. So as always you need to judge for yourself because books fit people differently Quite simply this book didn't Fit Me. I really have no interest in r

Whoever was responsible for the marketing of this book deserves a raise because they managed to make 600k+ people read this incredibly boring story.Youtube Review: https://youtu.be/3MKcVnfTlf4?t=475I've been joking around and explaining not loving most Memoirs/Autobiographies and some Contemporaries by stating that "I just don't really care about people". Clearly, it's far from the truth but... I'll make an exemption for these people.Didn't care one bit.Not sure if I'll watch the tv show...

I genuinely have no idea how to rate this. I LOVED the first half, felt lukewarm towards the middle, and then hated the ending????? The characters had so much chemistry but they refused to communicate I just 😤TW: sexual assault, domestic violence, depression, suicide

Wow! Check out Hulu’s marvelous adaptation! They did amazing job by adapting this lyrical, poignant, sad and realistic story with remarkable, heartfelt performances! It is a real soul crusher, heartbreaker! Get ready to set your ugly cries free!!!!This really reminded me of those tear jerkers, Oh God I cannot breathe, all my happiness swept away by emotional vampires vacuum cleaners inc., come on, that’s kind of nerve bending story that one of the protagonist has to die from a deadly disease ( o...