Normal People - Sally Rooney

About love, communication and youth...

This book is one of those books that make you want to be a writer. This books makes you jealous of the ideas and words and phrases and techniques that Rooney used. It makes you want to make your way inside Sally's mind in order to be able to see and marvel at the beauties that lie in there...

He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her

The characters are what makes this particular story so good. And, more concretely, not the characters per se, but the way in which Sally describes them in the book. The story itself is one that we all know: first love, bullying, starting university, discovering yourself. Absolutely nothing new on this front, we heard it all before if we put it in those simple words. But this is what makes this book so incredibly precious. Because what Sally does here is to look youth and young adulthood in the eyes and describe exactly what she sees. The does not talk about young-adulthood. No, she describes it as it is, raw and unfiltered through a writers mind. She puts on paper exactly what she sees: bullying, desire, miscommunication, self-discovery.

I read one review that said that "Normal People" is about too many things at the same time, that the characters concern themselves with way too many things and thus, it treats all of the subjects superficially. But this is what it is all about, right? Because the characters are young and discovering and trying to understand how the world that they live in works. It describes perfectly that way in which we, as young people, shouldn't have everything figured out and how we try to make sense of everything that is happening around us. So yes, one might say that is tackles many subjects, but this is how it's supposed to be.

Amazing, amazing book!

PS: watching the absolutely breathtaking show helps as well...