Here is the back cover blurb for Sally Rooney’s book, Normal People:
Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.
Not only is the writing immature in certain ways, but the characters from the beginning are immature. I understand that someone reading this who is younger or older than her intended audience may think this portrayal of young adults is accurate, but I, (who am of that age range), found them extremely immature. They act more like teenagers and remain one-dimensional throughout. Take, for instance: “It occurred to Marianne how much she wanted to see him having sex with someone; it didn’t have to be her, it could be anybody” (12). Marianne lacks a self, a side to love. I believe this comes from her author’s devotion to Marxism, where sacrificing herself to other people is the only way she can feel much of anything. “She just let things happen, like nothing meant anything to her” (22). Marianne remains this passive, bleak, almost deterministic character throughout the book.
But Marianne is no better than Connell. Who cares so much about other people in high school that he only has sex with Marianne in secret? Marianne asks him: “Would you be embarrassed if they found out? she said. In some ways, yeah” (94). It just seems so childish for a person who is no longer a boy. In a similar Marxist fashion, Connell is also focused on Marianne’s class, as if being wealthy makes you a different species. Rooney writes: “If anything, his personality seemed like something external to himself, managed by the opinions of others, rather than anything he individually did or produced” (73). So, Connell is a chameleon. He is a person who just feeds off of others. [And might I add that he is not the only character who is like this, Rob is another. For “Nothing had meant more to Rob than the approval of others” (219).]
I must say that I don’t believe Rooney’s attempts to just drop complaints about class and expect her readers to blindly shake their heads in agreement, just like she did with those Leftist book titles. I went to public school, and I had friends from all ends of the class spectrum, especially for a child who has no control over where or how they grow up, your “class” in America does not make you into something alien as this Marxist author is trying to imply. Who cares about your class or station or rank when you are in high school? Again, I find it childish.
Throughout the text, there is this confusion about sexuality, mainly concerning Marianne. Again, being the good little Marxist, she is open to open relationships, bisexuals, homosexuals, threesomes, whatever happens to her happens. Of course, she can never be happy when she does nothing to better herself or her situation! The whole beginning felt like an inferior version of The Breakfast Club. Why does adulthood seem synonymous with doing immoral things, as if losing your soul is cool? So, Marianne sleeps around and takes up smoking and looks anorexic and depressed all the time. Is that what it means to be an adult? She has conversations with Connell like, “I think I was starting to have feelings for you there at one point. […] You just have to repress all that stuff, Marianne, he said” (101). So not falling in love with anyone is cool? Both main characters made me cringe with their “look at me, I’m so adult” behavior. For example, Marianne discusses getting pregnant with “I like to upset people’s expectations” (105) as her justification for doing so. Anyone who does things just for other people is not ready for any kind of responsibility in this world. And look, I’ve gone through my teenage “scene phase,” but by high school, and especially college, I was ready to be a responsible adult, and I never felt like truly, passionately loving another human being was “uncool.”
The only “change” occurs in the middle of the book when Marianne and Connell’s social status reverses—now she’s considered “cool” and he’s not. But what actually changes in terms of their appraisal of themselves and how they feel? Nothing changes in the book; there is no character change. I’m not even sure it can be considered a complete book at all. Neither character realizes their immaturity, although they do manage to say “I love you” by the end. But is that considered a change when they become separated again by choice?
If anything, each character only becomes more depressed. I would blame their Marxist ideology on such emotional turmoil, but let’s look at some phrases each character uses first. They refer to themselves as “self-hating” (pg. 139); that “they had the same unnameable spiritual injury” (175); that “human life was pointless” (232); that “She hates the person she has become, without feeling any power to change anything about herself” (244); that they were “becoming unrecognizably debased” (245); that “deep down she knows she is a bad person, corrupted, wrong” (247); and yet, “No one can be independent of other people completely” (pg. 269). By the end, Marianne has let herself embrace becoming a sexual plaything, and Connell is so depressed that he wants to kill himself. Now, do these sound like well-adjusted young adults to you, dear reader?
I believe that this is a true vignette of what happens when young people try to erase their egos. They can no longer love passionately; they wallow in their own self-hatred. I implore anyone who has not yet read The Fountainhead to read it. This is real literary fiction where the character of Keating is shown in exactly the same way as Marianne and Connell—parasites. But Ayn Rand can explain Keating’s behaviors through philosophy, unlike Rooney, who gives you a sketch of two messed-up people. You can only grow to hate yourself or consider yourself a monster when your life does merely become a string attached to a web of other people. When you become other people, like a chameleon, then how can you act? To live on this earth with any agency, and, ultimately, any happiness, then you must uphold your ego.
The fact that people are praising Sally Rooney as some kind of voice for the millennial generation greatly disturbs me. Wake up, readers! It’s frightening that people are espousing how much Rooney is exposing their own feelings on the page. It means that those people are fighting against what makes them human on a daily basis.
The book would be better if she wrote about it as an anecdote of how not to behave, but instead, she loves her characters (as most writers do), and she wants them to represent how she sees the world. But it’s wrong and surprisingly immature for someone her age.
I am just a few years younger than her, and I learned that this kind of wallowing is for teenagers at most. But there should not be a kind of anger, bitterness, and frustration that should carry through into your 20s and 30s. If anything, this proves that millennials are less mature than the previous generation.
Yet, the publishing industry opened its arms wide to accept their new literary figurehead onto the scene, because nothing has changed there. Normal People seems to be about outcasts who are not really even outcasts. They are, in fact, cultural representatives of the Left, which is what the publishing industry comprises. Rooney’s characters are moochers, sucking off the teat of literary fiction’s prestige to feed their own lack of character.
Rooney paints characters who have no “self” in a world where sex is merely about power and manipulation and not something beautiful to be cherished. She destroys the ego, which is necessary for our survival. Yet, no one in her story has agency. Marianne unconditionally loves Connell, while he is afraid of dominance and of becoming a man. But, to me, being submissive is a gift that a woman gives to a man she truly values and trusts. It is the very expression of love for a woman, as dominance is for a man. But Rooney does not think monogamy or boyfriend/girlfriend dynamics truly exist. (Because you have to have a self and be confident enough to form such relationships). She hates “masculinity,” believes in “the patriarchy,” and that capitalism is a “coercive system.” The same old, same old ideology. She is just another liberal, checking off her list of things to drop in her story. Well, she does not speak for me, nor does the entire publishing industry. I refuse to recognize Sally Rooney as the great millennial writer who is a perfect representative of literary fiction.
End of Part II
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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.