Sally Rooney’s Normal People BBC

[HDDD]

This book has been on my to read list for a while. I took a lazy punt and decided to watch the 12 part BBC adaptation instead. Now I’m overjoyed I never read it. It fascinated me and irked me in equal measure. I don’t want to give spoilers but the thing that grated the most was the ‘pretty’ thing. I don’t know how much was made of this in the book but Marianne said of herself that she wasn’t pretty at school and blossomed in college. Others also said it of her. She didn’t change the structure of her face! I think I have an irrational dislike of the word pretty anyway, but I’d be interested in other views on this – the pretty thing, and whether this book is indeed a modern feminist classic or mainly hogwash.

TheProdigalKittensReturn

Saying you're a lifelong anything sounds pretty funny when you're under 30

Doesn't it just- especially coming from someone so clearly befeiting from capitalism

i imagine her emerging from the womb wearing a black polo neck & beret....

if you're fed up with this, read George Eliot instead. The attractive women in her novels (like Gwendolin Harcourt) are all flawed.

Doesn't it just- especially coming from someone so clearly befeiting from capitalism

Would someone doing well in a Marxist society have to refrain from preferring capitalism, then?

Anyway, I've know quite a few very intelligent Marxists and I don't think I'd call it a "discredited" theory either. If anything there has been something of a resurgence in recent years as the number crunching version of economics has proved wanting.

Anyway - some of my friends wanted to read this together, but based on the descriptions here I am thinking not.

It seems ironic to me that SR describes herself as a Marxist. In NP, Marianne's school mates are all depicted as this group of morons basically - girls and boys. Loud and stupid. They're the novel's peasants. Except Connell. He is an Adonis, as well as a polymath - literary, sensitive, brilliant sportsman and all round genius. As unrealistic as you can get in a fictional character. But he has to be. It is no coincidence that he is the person - the only person - from that social world that Marianne is interested in. In order for someone from the peasantry to be with this beautiful member of a much higher class, he has to be amazing, obviously.

The school I went to is not too dissimilar to the one Connell and Marianne go to and I find Rooney's depiction of 'the masses' offensive. It's reductive and insulting of actual normal people. Everyone in my experience is complicated. This book despite all its nuance clearly depicts 'working class' as inferior to 'middle class'.

But even on class, it's confused! Maybe I've forgotten some crucial detail but why is Marianne so posh? Why is her house like something members of the aristocracy would live in? Her mother is a solicitor, which as a profession surely can earn well, but not that well! Especially in rural Ireland. That makes no sense.

I do admire her style and the tension she achieves in her writing but there is a lot that's problematic imo.

He is an Adonis, as well as a polymath - literary, sensitive, brilliant sportsman and all round genius. As unrealistic as you can get in a fictional character.

So basically he's Edward Cullen for people who think they're deep?

The school I went to is not too dissimilar to the one Connell and Marianne go to and I find Rooney's depiction of 'the masses' offensive. It's reductive and insulting of actual normal people. Everyone in my experience is complicated

I expect the school is very much like the sort of rural / small town comprehensive which many people went to. The sort of school which is the only one in the area and everyone- no matter what their background- goes to because other being sent to a boarding school there's no other option. That was the sort of school I went to.

Doesn't everyone at that age think they are unique and special? especially in that sort of one size fits all school where the golden boys and girls will have been marked out early on for (in my day) university and now a good university. I suppose she got that bit right.

Where it fails is there is no self- awareness in either Marianne or Connell that they are just like everyone else really and not particularly interesting.

But even on class, it's confused! Maybe I've forgotten some crucial detail but why is Marianne so posh?

She wasn't particularly posh but the idea that she was unique because of her background is nonsense too. In that type of school there will be children from non- working families, children from Council houses, children from farming backgrounds, which in itself covers a wide range of incomes, the children of the local doctors, solicitors, accountants, pub and hotel owners- basically children from all economic and social backgrounds.

It's the local community school. Traditionally in Ireland, people from Sally's background would go the local convent school or possibly a private boarding school. Community schools were originally technical schools, deemed appropriate for trades and work rather than university. Every town has a convent school.

Yes, there is more social mixing outside Dublin - there are not many private schools in provincial/rural Ireland so it's common for schoolkids from very different backgrounds to mix. Marianne (or Sally herself as the daughter of middle class educated parents) would have felt herself comfortably high up the social ladder in a small town. However, coming to Trinity it is an enormous shock to encounter the kids from the Dublin private schools, their confidence, wealth and connectedness. They dominate the Dublin universities and it can be a very intimidating experience to suddenly find yourself at the bottom of the ladder. Even if you succeed academically and socially, you may still feel like a hick and an outsider.

I don't think any of this is "Marxism" though.

I didn’t read the book, I just finished watching it on BBC. I knew nothing about it and just happened to watch it.
I enjoyed it. I wasn’t looking for a masterpiece, but it entertained me, and made me feel old 😂. A bit pretentious and immature in places, but isn’t that what being young is all about?
It made me think and stayed with me.

@TheProdigalKittensReturn
So basically he's Edward Cullen for people who think they're deep?

Basically, yeah.

I agree, @Shalom23. She would have been in the local convent school or would have boarded in the nearest private school. She wouldn't have gone to the local community school- no way. That's on the basis of how incredibly well-heeled she comes across in the TV series but the book too, as far as I recall. I just don't think NP nails the nuances of class in rural Ireland at all.

The book reminds me of what was said about F Scott Fitzgerald - that really he was in thrall to the high society he sought to critique in his beautiful novels. I think NP betrays a world view where the masses can all be painted with the same brush except for the rare exception, and rich folk are interesting, even if some of them are 'bad guys'.

This article basically sums it all up for me. Glad someone in the media has seen it for what it is!

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/05/sally-rooney-normal-people-hulu-bbc-soap-opera?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

like that review.

in Dublin we say .. how do you know somebody went to Trinity?

they’ll tell you in the first 5 minutes of meeting them.

Maybe we should say how do you know somebody is a Marxist?

Yes, an excellent review.

"But she’s different, you know? We know this because she does things like look out of windows, daydreaming, which regular people would never dare to do."

That statement also sums up about 70% of female protagonists across the literary spectrum. As the reviewer says, at least when such cliches are presented as good honest genre fic, the result tends to be more amusing.

Oh god that review, yes! It's good on the humourlessness of it, I don't think there's one fecking joke in the whole book! There is more acute commentary on life, love, sexual politics and class in the early novels of Marian Keyes, and at least Marian is funny.

Marian would also give short shrift to a bloke too embarrassed to be seen in public with her.

Haven't read the book but I found the TV series dull and pretentious.

I only starting watching it because I read a good review on the BBC website. And only continued to watch because I went to Trinity myself.

Agree the whole class thing is totally confused. There's no way a small-town solicitor (Marianne's mum) would own three properties, a townhouse in Dublin 4, a villa in Italy (!) and a pile in the countryside. Ludicrous.

There was no real middle/ working class divide when I was at Trinity - no distinctions were made according to what school one went to. I mixed with people from all walks of life and we were on the same level. Ireland, north and south, just doesn't have the same class structure as England.

And agreed, to call oneself a lifelong Marxist is excruciatingly twee.

Tulipsinajug there's no middle class/working class divide because very few people from manual working backgrounds go there, even now. Class structures are not as entrenched in Ireland as in the UK but they exist and people are not really "on the same level" and the more comfortably off are often oblivious to the differences. I would imagine that has got a lot worse with the scarcity of accommodation, unpaid internships and expectations of parental support.

Still doesn't make Normal people any less daft though!

Among my friendship group were students who came from a two-up-two-down in a poor area of Belfast, someone from Gaeltacht Donegal who lived with a relative, someone else from rural Cork who lived miles out because she couldn't afford to live in Dublin, and students who had gone to private schools in Dublin. We came from widely differing backgrounds and levels of wealth but socially were 'on the same level' because of a lack of a class divide in Ireland. I'm Irish. There were people from all backgrounds at Trinity, and we had all had got there on merit. It was twenty years ago. Maybe it's not like that now.

Tulips I agree. I grew up on a council estate, all siblings left school at 15. I got full grant to study at Trinity. It's very very different to the Engkush class system. Of course it's a lot easier for middle class kids, cultural assumptions etc but it is not comparable to the class system in UK. Until the 79s most Irish families were either farmers or part of a growing civil service. Social mobility is easier in Ireland, due to historic reasons, no industrial revolution, and also because the Irish government has always invested in education. I have a few friends who after years on welfare went back to study in Trinity because there were social structure to allow that, free access courses for mature students free third level and maintenance grants.

Shalom, agree social class is more fluid but the Irish government has not "always invested in education" - the UK was over 20 years ahead of us with free secondary education and until that filtered through the population, we performed very poorly by international standards.

Tulips, I know there are people from different backgrounds who mix socially but the differences can become more obvious later - who is well connected, whose parents can support them financially, help them buy a house in a nice area - and people often drift back to their close knit circles. Not being cranky but I find Irish posters on Mumsnet a bit keen to paint Ireland as a classless utopia compared to the Downton Abbey style class-bound UK but it's wishful thinking!

the book is a brilliant portrayal of people that age. Many women don't relate to it I think because they;'e older and have forgotten what it's like to be 20.

I feel like at the moment the Venn diagram of people who call themselves Marxists and people who've actually read Marx (or Engels) would contain barely a sliver of overlap.

I don't think you forget what it's like to be 20 - and even if you do, many of us are parents and are reminded on a daily basis
I agree it's a good portrayal of that age; what it doesn't do is represent youth in a particularly flattering light. I don't know if that was deliberate on the author's part or not.