READ + WATCH: Normal People by Sally Rooney
The Irish author Sally Rooney made waves in the literacy world when her second book ‘Normal People’ became the talk of the town in 2018. The BBC TV adaptation of the popular book dropped on Hulu at the end of last week, and has broken records with large viewing figures on BBC iPlayer.
Normal People tells the coming-of-age story of Marianne and Connell, two teenagers from different social backgrounds navigating their last year of school in a small Irish town and moving onto college life at Trinity College in Dublin.
I sailed through the thoughtful book which features a lot of inner dialogue that they have managed to translate onto the screen. It was great to see that Sally Rooney was one of the writers of the show which is loyal to the original book (this is my main criticism of the TV adaptation of the award-winning book Little Fires Everywhere which is sadly not).
It is a tender, sexy and sometimes sad story about two characters who connect intellectually and physically, but often miscommunicate because of their social status, peer pressure and insecurity.
Normal People makes you think about your own adolescent story of your first love, the big step of deciding where to go to college, and how you grew into a young adult and moved away from your identity at home.
