Normal People

This was a Mills and Boon romance novel for the contemporary age.

Every time a book like this wins awards and gets praise, I come to the conclusion that modern books are written for the growing demographic of people who... simply don't like reading books. Firstly, there's nothing remotely 'normal' about these two characters. I'll skip over the predictably dream-like otherness of Marianne and focus on the utterly non-existent Connell. I mean, I'm sorry, but that guy (calm, thoughtful, caring, emotionally mature, intellectually honest, culturally sensitive, performatively left-wing, etc) only exists in the heads of women -- women writers in particular. Connell isn't just these things by the end of the book after a series of life changing events. No, he's these things from the very start... as a teenager. You know, like most normal teenage boys are.

These two people are highly popular, good looking, the smartest in school, having regular sex, and are apparently off to university where they'll end up travelling around Europe on a gap year and become writers. You know, like normal people.

I was genuinely quite irritated but this book. It's everything I hate in fiction. It was sold as literary fiction but the fact is... it's the standard chick-lit novel and nothing more. So why all the hype and awards? I couldn't tell you. It was all rather banal and trivial. I did, however, like the ending. These two millennial idiots can't seem to communicate their feelings. Even at the end she tells him to go to New York. I do wonder what point Rooney was making though. It's not as if her generation are emotionally closed off or anything, in fact, aren't they prone to expressing their feelings continuously unlike any other previous generation? I feel like I've been duped onto reading a Coleen Hoover novel.