Bookseller Love for Normal People

The TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People is finally here, and we are all… feeling things. Some of us binged it in a day, some of are taking our time, taking in episodes here and there to make it last a little bit longer… some of us haven’t been able to bear it. When Normal People released in 2018, so many of our booksellers adored it, so we wanted to revisit these feelings and inspire you to pick up the book if you haven’t already. Or who knows? Maybe you’ll want to give it a reread before diving into the series…

Buy your copy of Normal People here!

“I’m by no means the first one to say this, but heck I’ll say it again — Sally Rooney is our modern George Eliot. No one writes the 2019 social novel of manners with her level of observation, complication, and sensitivity. Her sophomore effort introduces us to Marianne and Connell, whose secret high school relationship led to the kind of entangled growth that can only begin with the most potent kind of love. As they move from high school to college to the wide open beyond, their social standing shifts, tipping along with it who holds more power over the other. Less cynically, they remain magnetically drawn to each other, as much for their beguiling differences as for the shared language they’ve built between them, secret and untranslatable to everyone else. These are normal people who feel exceptional to themselves and to each other, cementing and exploding their ordinariness. From page one, I read this novel of love and coming of age and conversations of the day with my heart aflutter in my throat — I hated to turn the last page.” – Molly M

“Leonard Cohen’s “So Long, Marianne” played as I turned the last page of Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People,’ her lush, sophomore effort that puts modern love under the microscope. Like the song, the novel is a bittersweet ode to love lost and found; subtle and heartrending. Rooney tells the story of Connell and Marianne, the on-again, off-again couple of the novel, with acuity, capturing the minutiae of millennial romance. It’s absolutely impossible not to get entirely invested in the lives and loves of these two.” – Uriel

“Sally Rooney’s writing made me feel like I was 20 years old again. It took me back to those days of love and lust and stupid misunderstandings, the first time you’re out in the world on your own, confused as hell– I could feel it all again, as vividly as the first time. Rooney is a spectacular writer and I recommend NORMAL PEOPLE to anyone who loves character-driven stories with exquisite sentences.” – Eugenia

“Add Sally Rooney to the list of authors whose work I will now always seek out and read immediately. The story of Marianne and Connell is at once complete ordinary and, at the same time, by delving deep into their inner lives, Rooney makes it extraordinary. She is asking all the right questions about what we’ll do to and for the people we love, how we communicate and struggle to understand each other, and how our own insecurities and inner lives impact our relationships with others.” – Abby

“Normal people can sometimes acts abnormally, and that can be because of many underlying reasons, like psychological reasons that have been ignored in their lives. The story of Marianne and Connell who grow up in a small city, meeting each other in school and then continuing their life together in a bigger city, is an example of a normal life and a normal love story that deals with difficulties. Every character has a hidden painful reality that shocks the reader. The story is filled with many emotionally intense incidents. Rooney has a great talent of telling a story and giving the reader a detailed version of a normal problem, always taken for granted. What I really liked about the book was the author’s art of character development, how many changes happen in Marianne and Connell in their path of life and self discovery.” – Razieh