I didn't love 'Normal People' by Sally Rooney? Review/ramble

Hi guys,
Just a quick video trying to work out why I didn't love Sally Rooney's 'Normal People' as much as everyone else seems to. Please let me know if you did/didn't like it and why! I am genuinely interested, feel like I'm missing something, haha.

Books mentioned...
Normal People by Sally Rooney

[NatalieMeree]

I am in the I didn’t love Normal People camp. The angst of the characters just drove me insane. I put it down to simply just being past that stage in my life and absolutely not wanting to revisit it.
I just found it a meh read and like you the writing didn’t wow me enough to want to read any more of her books.
So I don’t think you missed anything.
Thanks for sharing your review of a book you didn’t love so much. We all need both sides of the fence when it comes to books reviews

[aliquidcow]

I'm about 50 pages from the end and I really dislike it. As someone else said in these comments, it may be that I'm about ten years too old to care about this sort of thing since it's a stage of life that no longer seems so massively important to me. But even that aside, I don't think her writing is that good. It's bland, and she has a tendency to tell rather than show - for example we hear that Connell is apparently really intelligent, yet he never says or does anything to make us see this (not least in the case of his emails, which we're told are exquisitely written but turn out to be utterly banal). As my partner pointed out, she rarely bothers to describe places and settings, which among other things led me to believe that she assumes a certain level of knowledge for the reader about the locations she's writing about, which I found a bit unthinking (possibly even self-absorbed) of her. And what eventually dawned on me as I'm reaching the final stretch is that there is NO humour in this book, as if she thinks because she's writing a serious book about serious themes, she can't have funny things happen or people say funny things, despite these being features of the everyday life she's writing about. It's an amateurish mistake in my opinion; even some of the most austere and serious of novels employ humour because it's a valuable tool for storytelling.

I may be with you in that I tend to come to hyped-up books with a degree of cynicism but I was really baffled with this one; the things that I'd read about it, how it tackles urgent contemporary themes and so on, just aren't there.

[barbradingwall]

I'm in the "it was ok" camp. I didn't get what all the fuss was about - seemed like a fairly run of the mill on again, off again story of a relationship. I am still baffled at what made this become such a book darling.

[CuriousReader]

So funny, I also just read this book (early May) and felt rather underwhelmed. I mostly found it fine but unremarkable, but I also ended up also having some issues in particular with the characterisation and how her abuse background was dealt with (or rather, not dealt with) in particular.

[RiordanRain]

Good Writers can write an inteligent protagonist because they themself are inteligent. Bad writers can only remind the readers that their protagonist is intelligent or by surrounding their protagonist with feeble -minded characters because what intelligent they themself are not.

[jessbfoster]

I have been baffled by the reception. Kudos to her marketing team who rolled this out to nigh universal praise. I like what she has to say but she just doesn't dwell on anything more than a few pen strokes here and there and everywhere, ah pretty. No depth. Sure, the writing flows well, and the book reads incredibly easy (no easy feat, that), there are some clunky similes and phrasing. She certainly has a weird take on how we breathe and sigh, (I have to quote this when people think her writing is glorious): 'He puts his hands in his pockets and suppresses an irritable sigh, but suppresses it with an audible intake of breath, so that it still sounds like a sigh'. How??? Just odd. I feel I read books like this growing up, nothing too new.

[phoebesmart]

I have just found this after reading the book and not getting the hype. So glad someone else feels the same!! I just felt like something was missing and didn't understand the rave around it. I had to get my Mum to read it too to see if it was just me that felt that something was missing lol! I just felt like it was 5 years of friends with benefits and thats it... it's not a bad book but I was definitely waiting for that something to happen that never did.

[annieb]

I got a hundred pages in and...gave up.

[bisforbranding]

SO GLAD TO SEE THIS. Thought it was just me! I found it so ‘meh’. I listened to this on audiobook and wondered if it was that..? I was so bored going back to it every time, and hardly remember it now that a few months have passed and I’ve read a dozen more books. When I look at the title and cover illustration, I’m like, ‘what was I expecting?’ She tells us she’s writing about basic bitch life. I don’t understand what about it made people cry? But like you say, different people like different books! Good on you for not being swayed by the hype. 💕

[evam]

I just finished it and wanted to look for videos about it to see why ppl loved it so.much, for me tho...it was ok and it felt like a lot of other books about boy and a girl growing up and having this on and off relationship...feels like YA romance but for adults i guess

[sarahk]

I thought this was fine, but yeah I also didn't love it. I found the dynamic between the two main characters really boring and like you I didn't think the class elements were particularly successful. It read like an MFA project :P

Also the abuse bits, I honestly thought they were awkwardly placed and didn't really fit in. The whole book is kind of clumsy. Agree with your comments about nice prose though!

[may.theresia]

I wonder wether the reason for people to love it is that it has a sort of hidden fairy-tale-narrative. I definitely belong to the people, who were highly impacted by the story (the book and the series as well) - and in my opinion too impacted, since I've been crying and thinking about it for weeks, which has never happened to me before and I really don't want it to influence my life as much.
So here are my thoughts: I have grown up deeply disliking romances, because I found them unrealistic and never wanted that for myself. Because Normal People doesn't have a strictly happy ending and because they have a complicated relationship it doesn't strike me as unrealistic and I guess most people wish for people they connect with on a deep level. In a way I feel like Normal People wants to tell a more realistic 21st century love story, but is a bit 'back-stabbing' with romantic ideals like their connection.

[jelliclesongs]

Totally agree!! Can't believe it has so much hype lolol

[sebastianromero]

Random fact I felt the same way (and it's odd to say because most people love her/it). Weirdly enough I had a similar experience. I read it when it was still not huge but big enough to know people loved it... however, my sister had told me she wasn't too fond of it. So I read it kinda not knowing what to expect. I found it extremely boring and repetitive. Like nothing really happened. It could've been a short story, I feel. It took me a while to finish (like 2 weeks) and books like these i can usually finish in three or two days haha or one if I'm really into it, but here I just felt there was no incentive to pick it up. And when I did I kinda forgot if they were together or not in that particular chapter, and yet it would rly affect so little. Like it was such an on again off again relationship, but every time they hooked up or broke up was a little the same, so I just lost track and honestly was never bother by it. I think Rooney is an AMAZING public speaker, though, and I think watching her in interviews makes you like her work a bit more; however, when I found out she was a Marxist I was perplexed, being that one of my criticisms of the novel had been exactly the unrealistic portrayal of class structures. Like Conell (I think that's what it was hehe) never felt truly pressed by this (as you said he was too smart, too unaffected by it, like he would think something like oh that was boujee and then go about his own boujee life), and the fact that his mother worked for her always seemed to be more like a thing in the background than something actively affecting the plot.

[CharlieBrookReads]

I read this before the hype which probably helped . I chomped through it ... I think the characters were the thing that sucked me in the most . I do feel like the ending didn't sit well with me . To me the ending felt rushed and just fell flat that was my main niggle with it. I can see all of what you're saying though and I think if I had read it after the hype then I probably would have felt the same .... Who knows though. I haven't rushed to pick up any more of her books either 🤷 Xxx I think it's always important to present a balanced view so it's great you shared your thoughts 😘❤️ xx

[סנדרהשלום]

Sally Rooney’s Hate Is the New Normal
It is not easy to convince the Snapchat generation to read books. To do so, you must be a gifted writer and know which buttons to press in young people’s hearts. Sally Rooney, a young Irish author, is that kind of writer. Her first two books have won multiple awards and she is widely regarded as one of the most prominent voices of millennials.
Rooney is also very opinionated. She is a self-proclaimed Marxist and an avid supporter of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS). In line with her views, she has refused to sell translation rights to Israeli publishers. Because of her notoriety, her decision caused quite a stir. The New York Times stated, “Sally Rooney Declines to Sell Translation Rights to Israeli Publisher.” CNN echoed, “Sally Rooney refuses to sell Hebrew rights for latest book to Israeli publisher, citing political objections, ” and other prominent news outlets also reported her decision.
In response, Israel's two largest bookstore chains announced that they would pull all of Rooney's titles from their shelves. This also caused a stir, though not as much. The BBC reported it, as did The Guardian and other British news outlets. Naturally, the Jewish press was all over the case, as well.
I sympathize with the response of the bookstore chains, just as I was in favor of banning other individuals and brands that boycott Israel. At the same time, I understand why they are doing this, and I am glad that it is causing a stir in Israel.
We can look the other way for only so long. At some point, we will have to ask ourselves why the world hates us, and it is better if we do it now than later.
We need to use such incidents constructively. By "constructively, " I mean that we should use them as an impetus to return to the roots of our nation, to our fundamental principles of mutual responsibility and brotherly love. These are the building blocks of our nation, and these are the qualities that we lost long ago and for which we were exiled from Israel.
When we were cast as a nation that was to be “a light unto nations, ” we were made to reflect the splendor of love of others to the entire world. Long before we gave the world Albert Einstein and Arthur Rubenstein, we gave it “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Granted, we did not quite manage to make it a reality, but the idea itself was, and still is, so novel, so unlike human nature, that to this day it seems undoable.
Still, the world will not leave us in peace until we begin to implement this very legacy we had left to humanity. Indeed, it makes perfect sense to demand that the progenitors of this sublime idea be the first to implement it.
The more the world becomes divided and hostile, the more it needs its opposite - love of others. The more people hate each other, the more they will demand that we love each other, and they will hate us for not doing so and setting an example for the world to follow.
In the near future, numerous celebrities, pundits, and politicians will declare their disapproval of Israel. They will not justify our existence as a sovereign state unless we justify it by setting an example of unity. Nothing else will satisfy them; nothing else will appease their hatred.

For more on this, see my publication The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism..

[mikegseclecticreads]

Nice review. Yeah I thought the book was well-executed and in my impression mostly did what it was trying to do, but I can agree that it wasn't above and beyond anything else out there. For me though the commentary on social classes was not a main focal point, so I didn't judge it too much on that basis, and I agree any such commentary was more cursory than incisive

[GFDF]

Julia’s review was very articulate, articulate, articulated or

[lewiswarren]

I think your comments are quite accurate and very perceptive, no doubt because they equate to my own. I had never heard of her although I am an avid book reader as quite an old guy. I also found it shallow as a psychological study and also with the depth of social commentary. For some reason I felt myself remembering Rainbow by DH Lawrence with its focus on the social integration of different individuals. So her book is technically very good but I felt many of the situations to be over-contrived even for the Irish. I also wonder whether it may appeal mainly to the millennium female demographic, although you are obviously an exception. So like some of the other comments I also did not see what the fuss was about.

[lb]

They made this into a BBC3 series in the UK this year and it was AMAZING, nominated for tv awards. I was hooked up till 3am to watch it in one sitting! Must see