normal people

I’m going to need a lot of espresso tomorrow. I’m sorry, everyone I have to talk to. But oh my goodness this book is beautiful. 

Actually, I’m reading another book right now about the dynamism of inter-class marriages. Pure nonfiction. I don’t even know why I bought it. It’s by a sociologist at Duke. And quite coincidentally, I cracked open this book because I knew I needed a novel. I craved the catharsis that comes from vicariously living through someone else’s pain. This book delivered. 

I have a soft spot for books about social class, fiction or nonfiction, because they resonate with me. I know what it feels like to have different values, and these different values engender misunderstanding. The way Sally Rooney developed Connell and Marianne, they are such tragic figures, both flawed and broken in their own way. Maybe that’s why this book felt so refreshing to read. How can two people who love each other ardently never quite end up together?

I love how Rooney changes the meaning of “good” throughout the narrative. At first, Connell says that “he was thinking about Marianne’s family, about the idea that she was too good for him.” Here, “good” delineates wealth; Marianne, whose parents are both solicitors, is above Connell’s social station and therefore out of his league. Later on, when Connell tells Marianne, “[Lorraine] thinks you’re much too good for me,” he refers to a different meaning for “good.” Connell believes that he did not treat Marianne well enough as a human being. 

And I love how Rooney is willing to discuss money, which remains even more taboo than sex. In fact, I think the romantic relationships in this book were a deliberate backdrop for her discussion of social class. Rooney writes frankly: “They had never talked, for example, about the fact that her mother paid his mother money to scrub their floors and hang their laundry, or about the fact that this money circulated indirectly to Connell, who spent it, as often as not, on Marianne.” Or here, Connell discusses how his relationship with Helen grounds him: “He can sit down to dinner with Helen’s parents, he can accompany her to her friends’ parties, he can tolerate the smiling and the exchange of repetitive conversation... To be known as her boyfriend plants him firmly in the social world, establishes him as an acceptable person, someone with a particular status, someone whose conversational silences are thoughtful rather than socially awkward.”

I think money directs this entire novel, but I also don’t think Rooney takes a definitive stance on if money is good or bad, corruptive or beneficial. Instead, she just acknowledges how much money influences every day life, not matter who you are. Maybe “time consists of physics, money is just a social construct,” but in the end, it dictates thought.