Author: Sally Rooney On Substack

The anti-gravity that I have towards reading fiction, especially romantic ones, stems out of my subconscious desire for scientifying the plot which will inevitably go for cutting out the melodrama. Then what will remain? Nada. This is why I mostly keep myself out of this genre and keep my chatty brain occupied with crime thriller and neo-noir shows.

My GRE got postponed, due to the COVID-19 lockdown; bought packs of colas, noodles, coffee, masks, hand sanitisers, and other essential artifacts - then I sat down and started watching True Detective season 1, for n-th time where n >> 1. But for the 1st time, I didn’t feel comfort, instead unease. Maybe the gloominess was matching up with the pandemic angst - it was no more a screen-separated nihilism, but rather a sad snapshot of the end, the death. For the 1st time, I didn’t start looking into shot composition, story structure, dialogue delivery etc. etc. that my typical atypical niche content-seeking mind would have preferred.

I needed something ‘normal’ that is sad but where the melancholy is dialed down, where time is not a flat circle, but linear (painful though). So I started watching Normal People. Sadness was sprinkled here and there (actually quite a lot across all episodes), but it was more like a relief. The heartbreak(s) seem relaxing on the backdrop of thick COVID death tallies.

I have watched the TV show before reading the book - it is important to lay down this before writing anything about the book since otherwise, highly unlikely that I would have read the book.

I found the book generic. Still, I was reading since I was constantly transducing the words to the scenes from the TV show hence I was in a way rewatching the show. This is the problem (or blessing?) of watching the TV/film adaptations before reading the book (i.e. Harry Potter).

I liked one distinct thing on the pages - the awkwardness, Sally Rooney has captured it quite masterfully. In contrast to other books where the protagonist and the antagonist are deterministic, to the T; the people in the book are sporadic like the real us (mostly).

Also, the Irish aesthetic - which is my personal favourite in books, movies, and whatnot. I even liked the plain description of roads and houses. Quite obsessed with anything Irish, I confess.

I have given it a 3-star for 3 reasons - a) for not being another ‘happily ever after’, b) for creating an Irish ambience, and c) the mere effort of writing (it is tough, procrastination ties people down with all her eight legs).