Normal People

Rooney, Sally

Instant New York Times bestseller, longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, and with a Hulu TV series in production: Normal People is a wondrous and wise coming-of-age love story from the celebrated author of Conversations with Friends.

At school, Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers—one they are determined to conceal.

A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle each other, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.

Story Locale: Small-town and Dublin, Ireland