I fell in love with Sally Rooney the moment I opened her book ‘Conversation with friends’. I instantly knew I had to read more of her work. Fast. Like a drug addict I downloaded ‘Normal people’ on my ereader. And I was happy to get that kick, that instant verification that this book would not disappoint.

Sally Rooney’s characters are simple from the outside but so immensely complex on the inside. As a reader, we go through a journey with them and see them grow up before our eyes. We empathise about the refreshingly normal situations like going to high school and university while at the same time we get a glimpse of what it is like in the mind of teenagers that are marked by their past experiences. We only slowly discover with them the full personality range that originated from abuse, lack of love and abandonment. And yet, the characters don’t fully understand themselves and probably never will. Because we, on our own, are too biassed to make connections between our reactions and past events that created them. It’s only through a deep journey of self-awareness that we can connect the dots. But this is not what is happening here, here we discover the connections through a friendship, that has luckily a deep trust base and allows us to peek through the interior life of Marianne through Connell’s eyes and vice versa. 

Just as in real life, we are reminded that a person can be held back or empowered by their environment. We get to meet two versions of Marianne and fall in love with the one that blossoms in her new environment. If we take out the fake friendships and money interests, we find ourselves deeply reflecting about the powerful effect of relocating to a new city, friendship group, or culture. It is worth pausing here and reflecting on our own situation. Are we in the best possible place at the moment or can we implement little or even big changes to get to the possible best version of ourselves?

And finally, the elephant in the room: what do we define as ‘normal’? Normal is complicated, carries an emotional baggage and likes to present itself as ordinary when in fact it’s like a confetti circus of an emotional rollercoaster. We shouldn’t try to define normal because we would come to the same conclusion over and over again: that other people are normal and not us. But reality is that zooming into the individual we hardly ever find ‘normal’. We find a spectrum of events that lead us to the person we are today and we can consider ourselves lucky if we are at inner peace with that. 

Having said that, I’m off to check the online shop to find ‘beautiful world, where are you’, the newest novel from Sally Rooney up to date. I hope that it will be as beautiful of a ride as her previous two novels