Sally Rooney - Normal People

I must admit that I picked up Sally Rooney's book Normal People because of the reaction from some quarters about her comments on supporting Palestine and the criminialisation of dissent. Rooney is very explicitly pro-Palestine and against Genocide. Some of her detractors, perhaps never having read her work, or even understanding where she was from, attempted to say they would bring the full force of British Law on her head. Hailing, as she does, from Ireland she was remarkably unbothered.

Normal People is very much a novel of its time and place. It is set in Ireland in the 2010s as the country is going through massive austerity and political convulsions. The story of two youngsters growing up has as its backdrop a sense of crisis. The system doesn't work. There's no future. Class differences between the two are important. Marriane is clever, solitary and from a rich background. Connell is popular, attractive and very clever. His mum cleans Marianne's family home. The book is about their love affair and how they come close, grow apart but never leave each other. But it can also be read as the story of two people trapped by a system that leaves them little room for manouvre. Perhaps the best example of this is how Connell abandons Marianne - their love affair is kept secret and in his anxiety for not being thought badly for dating Marianne he takes someone else to the prom. It is of course appalling. It is also exactly the sort of thing that student teenagers do to each other, and it destroys Marianne for sometime. It is also, as we find out, completely unnecessary and Connell carries that guilt for some time.

Sometime later they meet at university and have an on off relationship. Their friends are mostly superficial, though they clearly feel extremely important. Their love is by turns chaotic, painful and beautiful. They never quite get the balance though and neither knows what they want. They discuss politics - there's an early college kid discussion of the Communist Manifesto - and they're both on the left, but not the activist left. There's a certain middle class disdain from both of them towards protest and political action. The one demo they do join - ironically about Palestine - is described in lacklustre and performative turns. Despite the opportunities they have they are trapped - because going to Trinity College takes Connell out of his Working Class life and Marianne from her upper-middle class life and turns them into a classless student. Academia beckons. Or perhaps work in some NGO. Despite Marianne's deep interest in politics - she seems remarkably unengaged with the world. The book makes one focus on the relationship above all else. Perhaps this is Rooney's comment on that Irish decade? Perhaps it is also arguing that the personnal shapes all else. Perhaps its just because its a book about two young people fumbling through life, love and sex. It left me unsatisfied. But it mostly reminded me why university was such an obnoxious experience.