Hey all! I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump, so not reading as voraciously as usual, but I did manage to read Normal People by Sally Rooney. I wanted to post another review so I can keep up with my goal of posting regularly! To be honest, I didn’t entirely love this book, but that might be explained by the fact that I would absolutely not recommend this book to any of my peers—it was a bit past my age group!
In the simplest of terms, I did have a few reasons for disliking the book, but there was a certain aspect of it that drew me in; it was the story of messing things up in your love life royally and still having love and possibility in your life. I feel like a lot of the books I read, stories I am told, or songs I listen to are about either the romantic idea of a soulmate or being in love with the absolute right person immediately in your life without messing anything up. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea that there is a soulmate out there for me, and think if you find your soulmate, you are the luckiest person ever. But, if we strip away everything and face the real, cold world, it’s hard for me to say that I’m going to find my soulmate immediately and not going to fall in love with the wrong person or get my heart broken. I can’t just wait around for my soulmate—that’s not how it works, I have to be kidnapped by a handsome fae—and if I do I’ll miss out on all the real, ugly parts of love in the real, hard world. I know that sounds scary, but I feel like I want to have that pain so I can finally understand those feelings I hear in books.
Normal People was beautiful in that it showed two real people living in the real world and falling in love with the wrong people, making mistakes, and generally messing everything up—they didn’t cling to finding the “one” but allowed themselves to experience all the pain of doing things wrong. I liked reading this book because it reflected how I’ve been trying to synthesize the love I see in books and the love I want to have in the real world. What the characters go through is messy, difficult, and full of mistakes, but those are all part of real life and I liked that Sally Rooney didn’t shield me like other authors had.
This is getting far more honest than I imagined, but I would like to say that I do love a bit of shielding now and then; the world is cruel and love is scarce, so it’s nice to escape to a perfect world of perfect love stories. But, as I’m growing up, I guess I do want to know what’s waiting in store for me and have my shelter taken down a little bit. I have enough armor that it doesn’t hurt to realize that I’m going to make mistakes in love, hurt or be hurt by people, and most probably fail completely. I applaud and thank Normal People for making me feel that it’s okay to make those mistakes. For a moment there, reading fantasy and romance books, I was getting deluded by the idea that my love life would be a perfect 200-300 page book with a wonderful, picturesque love, so it was refreshing in a weird way to get grounded in the real and surprisingly not-scary world by Normal People.
For everything else, I didn’t really enjoy the book. As I said, I would have been fine reading it a bit later than I did, as well as maybe discussing it with someone—you guys don’t count! So, I do advise all of you to evaluate honestly whether you want to read it and I’d love to know your thoughts as well; I think it’s a very thought-provoking and dividing book.
Genre: fiction
Age: 16+
Rating: 5/10