Normal people: One million copies sold : Rooney, Sally by Sally Rooney

Normal people: One million copies sold : Rooney, Sally Reviews

• 
  William Moberg

  Har inte läst boken än men den va bra förpackat och inga skador på boken
• 
  Lola

  The Times called it 'the best novel published this year'.The Guardian praised it as 'a future classic'.Elif Batuman, author of my favourite 'The Idiot' said: 'I couldn't put 'Normal People' down I didn't think I could love it as much as 'Conversations with Friends', but I did. Sally Rooney is a treasure. I can't wait to see what she does next.'For me it was a no (a NO!!!). I'm feeling tired just thinking about explaining myself and the annoyance, disappointment and almost hurt I experienced while reading 'Normal People'. I want my money back!Throughout the book I kept thinking why, why is this not working for me? Why I'm becoming and annoyed? Why don't I care? Why?? Maybe because I am no longer a target audience of the book.Nice enough writing and observations but somewhat dull and infantile. The very notion of the two people, seemingly perfect for each other, ruining each other's lives over and over again drove me mad. It became repetitive, then it became boring. I just could not stand reading about on off relationship of these young damaged adults while such important matters like domestic abuse, depression and mental health in general were hugely overlooked.I really cannot see why the novel made it to the Man Booker Prize longlist. And yes, perhaps it's not a one star book but at this point, this is what I feel.You know what I reminded me of? Rupi Kaur and her poetry.
• 
  sue gee

  I feel really sorry for Sally Rooney, there have been so many interviews and plaudits for her and this novel but I am afraid they are unwarranted. I can't see why the novel made it on to the Booker Prize long list.It is clearly written by a young person with little life experience and it lacks depth. I didn't feel that the characters were 'real' and didn't really care what happened to them.I'm sorry to write such a poor review and I'm sure that Sally Rooney will develop as a writer and produce some better work.
• 
  Keith D. Stoddart

  Quite the most inane and intensely annoying book I have ever read.No cliche is left in the bag,the main characters are self absorbed bores,stuff just stupidly happens to enable the damn thing to keep moving forward until the inevitable ending is crowbarred in. Heaven know how the hell they’ll spin this drivel out into the proposed 12 part *TWELVE PART* tv adaptation.And the number of accolades it has received completely discredits those panels that dish out awards to cruddd like this.Straight in the recycling.
• 
  P. G. Harris

  Connell and Marianne are teenagers, sixth formers in small town Ireland. Connell is popular, intelligent, a member of the school soccer team. Marianne is distant, seen as an outsider, strange. Connell's mother is a single parent, who works as a cleaner for Marianne's family. One day, when Connell arrives to pick his mother up from work, a spark of attraction jumps between him and Marianne. That spark lights a fire which burns through their final days at school, to university and their early working lives, sometimes burning hot, sometimes cold.Author Sally Rooney has delivered a second wonderful novel, which surpasses her first, Conversations with Friends. While I loved the earlier work, the characters were challenging, difficult to warm to. Here, while they are still very human, deeply flawed, they are also much easier to love. At the end of the book, I felt slightly bereft, with a sense of loss that I'd not be spending any time in the company.The book is, at its heart, a portrait of two people maturing as they go through their late teenage years and into their twenties. When we first meet them, they seem uncomplicated, and they see each other and themselves in simplistic terms. As the book goes on, their characters develop, they start to understand themselves better, and to see the complexities in each other. We see them develop as psychological entities, deeply affected by their experiencesI absolutely loved Normal People, but that is not to say I found it an easy read. At times I could only read it in short bursts, so accurately does Rooney capture the agonies of living through the maturing of emotions, that it becomes an exquisitely painful experience. The brilliance of Rooney's writing is enhanced by the fact that her prose is extraordinarily efficient. Not a word is wasted. This is not intricate, florid writing. This is incredibly economic use of language which succeeds in portraying complex emotional turmoil with absolute clarity.The story is told episodically, with the intervals between chapters varying from minutes to several months. Rooney uses this extremely skilfully to play with the reader's emotions, noticeably so in a fairly early chapter when Connell behaves abominably towards Marianne. The chapter ends before we see the full implication of his actions, giving this reader at least a sense of 'phew, got away with it'. It is only a distance into the next chapter that the shockwave hits, and it is a long way into the book before the aftershocks die away, if they ever do.It will be interesting to see how Rooney develops as a writer. To date, she has written what are effectively two campus novels, a long way from Malcolm Bradbury or Kingsley Amis, but with perhaps similarities to Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot. Both novels also nod very definitely in the direction of Tender is the Night, perhaps even so here, where mental illness sits in the background.I do have to mention the very end, which I've not quite processed yet, and am not sure I ever will. Is it sad, with a note of hope, absolutely heartbreaking, or a pointer to the continuation of an endless cycle?In summary, an absolutely wonderful book. I read it for a long running book group, and for me this easily walks into the top five we've read over the years.
• 
  Boone

  After reading the reviews and the high praise about this author, I was excited to get this book. “The next great young writer,” they said. Waste of time. The characters are flat, the content (there really is no plot) is boring and insipid, and the mechanics of her writing are so rote it becomes than an annoyance. I absolutely hated this book and hated that it sucked hours of my life reading it. I kept hoping it would get better but it just droned on. If this is what millennial writers have to offer, I will begin re reading the classics or authors from previous generations who knew how to write. Ugh. Horrible.