Reading Diary: 25 Thoughts While Reading Normal People by Sally Rooney

It’s been a while since I made a Reading Diary and I forgot how much peace it brings me. Here’s a book that I found really hard to review: Normal People by Sally Rooney. It’s a quiet book. And from time to time, something from it randomly pops in my head and then I won’t be able to stop thinking about it for a while. It is dubbed as the book for “sad millennials”. People have mixed feelings about it. I personally liked it generally, but I think it’s in ultra-specific moments in the book where it shines. It could be a bit disjointed at times, but in those moments where it makes sense, it is profound and heart-wrenching and the writing is up there in some of the most beautiful conveyance of specific feelings I’ve ever read. And for that, I felt like it deserves to have a place in my reading journal.

I think I have a lot of highlights in my Kindle and I had to cut back significantly to fit my journal. As usual, the following are just personal musings and I cherry-picked those quotes that resonated with me the most. Also, if you have not read this book yet, please bear in mind that there are spoilers ahead.

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“I like you so much, Marianne said. Connell felt a pleasurable sorrow come over him, which brought him close to tears. Moments of emotional pain arrived like this, meaningless or at least indecipherable.”

1. Connell just gets it. This is the burden of people who feel too much. How random moments can make you cry or elicit deep, powerful emotions from you.

“But a desire for total communication, a sense that anything unsaid is an unwelcome interruption between them.”

“I would never pretend not to know you, Connell.”

2. It’s crazy how the imagery of this book in my head is closely tied (so much) to the TV series. I can even hear Daisy’s voice saying the above.

“For a few seconds they just stood there in stillness, his arms around her, his breath on her ear. Most people go through their whole lives, Marianne thought, without even really feeling that close with anyone.”

3. I really loved how Sally Rooney depicts and describes that feeling that lovers get that they are the only people in the world. I know it’s a cliché at this point, but it’s true. And it is one of the recurring themes in this book that Marianne and Connell have their own little world when they are together. In those moments, their truest selves show and nothing mattered outside of the four corners of their room.

“She feels like a soft piece of cloth that is wrung out and dripping.“

4. Sally Rooney! That vivid description! How can she make a dish towel description so heart breaking. Ugh.

“Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she’s aware of this now, while this is happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.“

5. It’s always heart breaking to me how little Marianne thinks of herself. This is the same sentiment I saw from Fruits Basket that goes roughly like “you can’t really love yourself unless someone starts showing you that you are worthy of being loved“, which doesn’t make sense if taken out of context. But I think this is generally true, especially for those that grew up or have been exposed to a traumatic and hostile environment. This is the reason why “loving” is so beautiful, especially when shared. You never know how expressing love to someone you care about can save them either in little or in big ways – like this case.

“At this Lorraine stood up and stripped off her gloves. Without speaking, she put her arms around Marianne and embraced her very tightly.”

6. I really love Lorraine as a person and as a mother. She showed concern for Marianne when no once else did and calls out Connell for being an asshole. Not everyone can do that to their child.

“He knew then that the secret for which he has sacrificed his own happiness and the happiness of another person had been trivial all along, and worthless. […] Nothing really. No one cared.”

7. Ah, the self-consciousness that ruins things. I feel like later, when it came to slowly outgrowing this with age, I get to experience more and give myself permission to feel more.

“In a way, I like the idea of something dramatic happening to me.”

8. Me. I am Marianne. LOL.

“Marianne, he said, I am not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.”

9. THE quote. That distinct sense that you are each other’s person. That falling in love is magic – that no matter your religious leanings or lack thereof, it makes you almost believe in a God and the divine.

“…feeling a strange sense of nostalgia for a moment that was already in the process of happening.”

10. For someone who lives majority of her life inside her head, this hits so hard. ;(

“Maybe I want to be treated badly, she says. I don’t know. Sometimes I think I deserve bad things because I am a bad person.”

11. Aaaw, Marianne. ;( This is actually the first book where I saw someone describe that desire to be beaten up during sex. Even be told “you are nothing”. It was an interesting point of view, but also very sad.

The whole trip felt like a series of short films, screened only once, and afterwards he had a sense of what they were about but no exact memories of the plot.

12. This dissociation that I also feel sometimes, described perfectly.

“It feels powerful to him to put an experience down in words, like he’s trapping it in a jar and it can never fully leave him.”

13. The power of writing.

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“That’s money, the substance that makes the world real. There’s something so corrupt and sexy about it.”

14. I saw an interview somewhere that Normal People is a story where class plays a huge role. And it shows. At how Connell views life. And somehow also dictated his actions. To an unconscious level, Connell didn’t pursue Marianne because he felt way below her because of the difference in their social class. That insecurity has always been there.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, says Marianne. I don’t know why I can’t be like normal people.”

15. I sometimes think this is what this novel is about. Trying to fit in to what they think is “normal”. And feeling that they fail to every time. That is what binds Marianne to Connell. Them feeling freely different and finding comfort from that together. What is “normal” anyway?

“Could he really do the gruesome things he does to her and believe at the same time that he’s acting out of love? Is the world such an evil place, that love should be indistinguishable from the bases and most abusive forms of violence?”

16. Sick AF. And the fact that Marianne allows it ;(

Life is the thing you bring with you inside your head.

“Her face was like a small white flower.”

17. How the mere sight of her face feels like a break from the cacophonous existence. They are each other’s person.

“He was like a freezer item that had thawed too quickly on the outside and was melting everywhere, while the inside was still frozen solid.”

18. Wow, what a description.

“I just feel like I left Carricklea thinking I could have a different life, he says. I hate it here, and now I can never go back there again. […] I can never get that life back.”

19. That feeling of not belonging anywhere anymore. I feel this on a deep level. ;(

“… but it was a nice thought, that he might not be suffering for nothing.”

20. To make sense of your pain and make something out of it. The few consolations of feeling too deeply: you overflow and you need something to catch it. So you create.

“Still, Connell went home that night and read over some notes he had been making for a new story, and he felt the old beat of pleasure inside his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car. Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.“

21. This is one of the best parts of this book (and one of the best quotes, personally). That sudden, random peek of sunshine. Sometimes, life brings out these random moments that remind us how extraordinary it is to be alive. And you believe in the goodness and beauty of life again.

“Dublin is extraordinarily beautiful to her in wet weather, the way the grey stone darkens to black, and rain moves over the grass and whispers on slick roof tiles. Raincoats glistening in the undersea of colour of street lamps. Rain silver as loose change in the glare of traffic.”

22. This is how I feel about Belfast in the rain.

“How strange to feel herself so completely under the control of another person, but also how ordinary. No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.”

23. This. This feeling of total abandon.

“I’d miss you too much, he says, I’d be sick honestly.

At first. But it would get better.”

24. This is a note to myself. It would get better.

“You know I love you, says Connell. I’m never going to feel the same way for someone else. […] Say you want me to stay and I will.

She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.“

25. It was a bittersweet ending. I initially thought it a was a bit anticlimactic but the more I think about how this ended, the more I agree to it. This may not even be a love story. Maybe this is a story about finding that person that understands you and accepts you, wholly. Finding someone that changes you. That one-in-a-million person that affected your life more than anyone else you’ve ever met. It’s a story of two people coming into their own, it just so happen that they needed each other to get to that point. But somehow, having the courage to let each other go once it is time.

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Overall

I feel like this is one of those books that I absolutely love because of how it was written rather than because of the story. Sally Rooney has a way of conveying that very specific feeling of ennui and melancholia with a simple turn of a phrase. It’s just perfect. I’ve always loved the cover where Marianne and Connell seem to be packed like sardines in a can. Each of them trying to fit in the box of their own making. At one point (several points, rather), they retreat to each other when it gets too much. But each other’s presence also pushes them. It’s like a constant co-dependent dance that brings both peace and chaos in each other’s life. “You should go. I’ll always be here. You know that.” And I believed it. It’s Marianne’s greatest sacrifice – and it was done out of pure love.

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Journal Outtakes

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Have you read Sally Rooney’s Normal people? If yes, what do you think of it?

If you want to check out my other Reading Diaries, CLICK HERE.

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