Sally Rooney (2018), Normal People, Faber and Faber, London, pp. 266
This is the book you should take with you in summer to
remember what it feels like to read a great love story. It is small town
Ireland and two young people are in love as they move from high school through
college and are just about to begin life. It is that time of life when it is
perhaps the most awkward to write about love without sounding flippant or pedantic.
It is difficult to speak of love that is so young and unsure, yet when done
right it is the kind of quiet love that makes you yearn for good literature.
Sally Rooney does it right. Not just in the convincing
way she portrays the protagonists, but also scooping up the sounds and smells
of the small town, the flavor of its people, the tone and tenor of high school
in the backwater stillness of the place, its intimacies and resentments. The
book brings to life those who have adapted themselves for life in a quiet town
that the world does not come to. It requires skill and an astute mindset to
stay full of life and happy in any place, but more so in a quaint little space dancing
to its own tune. The town is abuzz with news - rumours, love affairs, desertion,
quiet suicide, seething anger and the whole melodrama that makes life. And
amidst this are two people, vulnerable in their lack of self - consciousness,
who manage to escape that world without meaning to, and stay connected with
each other.
I admit it is difficult to write about it than read
and enjoy it. Grab a copy and have a lovely summer! There is an adaptation streaming
on Prime, but you are not going to, are you?
