Normal People

Normal People is a girl-meets-boy story with a difference, interrogating the difficulties of sincere communication in a complicated, post-ironic world. Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland, but they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years. This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another’s life – a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege. Alternating menace with overwhelming tenderness, this novel breathes fiction with new life.