Review: Normal People - the book: part two
In spite of the novel's general poignancy, frankly, I’m just not sure that Normal People worked on me. There are occasional passages of brilliance, like Marianne’s reflection on cruelty as something which ‘does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently. You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget.’ However, these moments are few and far between, and there’s a lot time spent describing characters sighing, shrugging, or mumbling “I don’t know,” – all of which do little to advance the story and struck me as void of any real meaning or effect. Even the dialogue between Connell and Marianne, two people that know each other so well, is often so earnest and dry as to feel machinelike. At one point, as they’re about to have sex after a long period apart, Marianne tells Connell that she ‘wants this so much,’ to which he replies, ‘It's really nice to hear you say that. I'm going to switch the TV off, if that's okay.’ The moment should be passionate, but their exchange dulls its impact.
Most of my issues with the novel really stem from Rooney’s depiction of Marianne. She’s what ‘complicated’ female characters might be referred to as an ‘enigma’ – both beautiful and ugly, popular and friendless. She’s also someone who is plagued by self-loathing, as‘[d]eep down, she knows she is a bad personality, corrupted, wrong, and all her efforts to be right, to have the right opinions, to say the right things, these efforts only disguise what is buried inside her, the evil part of herself.’ We understand that her struggles are informed by a past of domestic abuse inflicted by her late father; a cycle which is perpetuated by a sadistic older brother and a distant, passive mother. However, given that this familial dynamic is such a formative part of Marianne’s character, there is neither sufficient time nor depth devoted to clarifying its impact on her overall development. Alan, Marianne's brother, is particularly two-dimensional. Evidently, he’s a key part of understanding Marianne, and yet his exposure is limited to only a few, brief acts of unexplained cruelty. This culminates, suddenly and explosively, in his inadvertently breaking Marianne’s nose, at which point Marianne calls Connell, who comes to rescue her and confronts an intimidated Alan. I’m not sure what a better solution would have been (if a solution is even needed) but witnessing Marianne’s abusive relationship with one man be resolved by the intervention of another man felt reductive and struck me as an easy ploy to make Connell more heroic by comparison alone.
There’s also a hint of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope about Marianne that I can’t shake, particularly as the novel concludes with her telling Connell to go and pursue his writing in New York, and that she would ‘always be here.’ The implication of this exchange—and other similar moments throughout the novel—is that Connell, with Marianne’s support, is able to experience his existential crisis and emerge unscathed, ready to go and lead a better, bolder life, while her future remains in flux.
More often than not, I felt frustrated by this novel. Admittedly, though, there’s something in this frustration that keeps you totally immersed. Rooney certainly leaves you lingering in her characters, and the book crept quietly under my skin without my noticing. In spite of its flaws, I was ultimately engaged by its portrait of isolation, vulnerability, and the desperate yearning that we humans have to feel a sense of belonging.