throughout university and frequently self-sabotages, signifying that social acceptance has not changed her negative self-perception. After she breaks up with her boyfriend Jamie, she becomes subject to negative rumors and “reputational damage,” gesturing toward the impermanence of popularity.

Moreover, Connell’s positive attitude toward his relationship with Helen is shaped by the fact that it represents normality. After meeting Helen, he considers how it is now “physically possible to type and send a message reading: I love you!” Yet much of Connell’s happiness is connected to the fact that his relationship with Helen establishes him as an “acceptable person” who partakes in the behavior that is expected of someone in a healthy relationship. His desire to impress this upon others, however, demonstrates that the relationship itself is partly performative. Ultimately, the relationship breaks down because it only thrives when Connell is in a positive mindset. When more negative elements emerge, such as depression, anxiety, and irritability, it can no longer be sustained.

The suicide of Rob Hegarty, one of Connell’s best friends from school, consolidates the idea that social behavior is largely performative. Rob, who at school appeared carefree and popular, was ultimately deeply unhappy. Rob had bullied Marianne at school, but Marianne’s observation that “by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget” highlights the indelible scars and psychological truths that Rob may have learned through reflection on his own behavior.

Misunderstanding and miscommunication further impede Marianne and Connell from experiencing the fulfillment they desire. While they share a deep intimacy and “total sense of privacy” between them, they often struggle to vocalize their needs and desires, which impedes their relationship and personal growth. Rooney frequently deploys language that caricatures the idea of millennial egotism, such as when Connell refers to how he “carried the secret” of his relationship with Marianne around with him “like something large and hot.” Despite oblique references to “liking” each other and Marianne’s visceral reaction to discovering Connell’s relationship with Helen, much of the language surrounding their relationship is conducted in terms of equivocation. When Connell loses his job in Dublin and cannot afford rent that summer, he decides to ask Marianne if he can stay in her apartment with her over the summer. Yet Connell’s inability to communicate this in a straightforward way results in Marianne assuming that he “want[s] to see other people.” In Normal People, what is left unsaid often has a more devastating impact than what is vocalized. By not communicating their true desires, Connell and Marianne cause each other emotional pain. Rooney therefore effectively dismantles the idea of millennial narcissism, highlighting how a culture of avoidance in both language and actions can destroy the potential for human connection.

Despite the tumultuous relationship Marianne and Connell experience throughout high school and university, their friendship and connection is ultimately transformative and sets them on a path of personal growth. After their breakup at Trinity, the two are able to cultivate a friendship sustained by mutual interests and empathy. The evolution of their relationship is demonstrated by the contrast in Connell’s attitude when he tells Marianne he loves her at the beginning of Normal People and his attitude several years later, once they are young adults. Now that Connell has developed and matured, a statement which had once seemed terrifying now feels completely natural: “as if nothing at all had happened, which in a way it hadn’t.”

Ambiguity infiltrates the ending of Normal People, with the future of Marianne and Connell’s relationship being brought into question as Connell prepares to leave for a graduate program in New York. Yet irrespective of where their future lies, Rooney’s opening epigraph, from George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, encapsulates the way Connell and Marianne have changed each other’s lives irrevocably:

. . . that to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness.

The “normal” of the title is what the two main characters long to be. Perhaps even more, Marianne and Connell wish they could even understand what normal is to others and why they feel the condition slips from their grasp. Sally Rooney offers a coming-of-age story in which these characters depend on each for emotional support yet often refuse to admit that they are doing so. Although as teenagers their sexual relationship both joins them and pushes them apart, once they enter university, the emotional shadings of their relationship grow both stronger and more nuanced. While the gender disparities between them may be accountable for some of their feelings and behavior, Rooney suggests that class is a more important motivator and barrier.

Set in Dublin, the novel follows the pair of young people, who are fellow students, from high school through college. Marianne is ostensibly the more privileged of the two—as her family is well-to-do—but she suffers from low self-esteem, in large part owing to her family’s emotional and physical abuse. Connell, being working-class, bears the burden of higher expectations. Having been a well-regarded athlete in high school, his transition to a serious intellectual at the university level is a challenge in ways much different than he anticipated; he loves literature but not the posturing of many other enthusiasts, whom he regards as shallow. Coming to terms with his own morally ambiguous behavior, as he first draws Marianne close and then rejects her, forms a large part of his personal growth.

The readers’ acceptance of the plot and interest in the characters’ ultimate fate will much depend on their empathy with college-educated twenty-somethings. The author’s insights into their personal motivations makes their actions believable, if not always laudable, as their battles with adult expectations give way to taking greater responsibility for their own actions. Although key plot twists affect the outcome, the novel is basically character-driven.

The protagonists in Sally Rooney’s Normal People are two young adults, Marianne and Connell. They are an unlikely pair from different social circles, and the power play between them often hinges on their differences in social standing and personality. The minor characters in the novel consist of a handful of school-age friends and family members, many of whom remain somewhat vague in description.

In the beginning of the novel, teenage Connell is a popular star athlete who wouldn’t typically cross paths with the socially awkward Marianne. She is friendless and does not fit in with the popular crowd, and she has a detached air about her that even Connell notices. Connell is quiet but well-liked, with a sweet nature that people are drawn to, while Marianne perfectly content to read alone while her peers sneer at her social faux pas.

Another key difference between Marianne and Connell is that Marianne is wealthy. The first time these two characters connect is when Connell is picking up his mother, who cleans Marianne’s family’s mansion. Connell’s mother is a single parent from a family with a poor reputation, while Marianne’s mother always seems well put together and chic.

The inequalities of social class and the often strained relationship between Marianne and Connell are explored as the two characters continue their education at Trinity College in Dublin. At college, their roles are somewhat reversed, as Marianne becomes popular and Connell retreats into the shadows and feels out of place.

As many of the social constraints that seemed to doom the young relationship eventually dissolve, the constant push and pull of Marianne and Connell's magnetism toward each other is unrelenting. The characters often find themselves in awe of their closeness. At one point, Connell even notes,

With Marianne it was different. He could do and say anything he wanted with her . . . It gave him a vertiginous, light-headed feeling to think about it.

Both characters are molded by one another during their years at college, and the charged yet raw nature of their relationship is the focus throughout the entire novel.