Readers,
Summer has come to Melbourne, or, at least, it’s been popping in and out to say hello. With the advent of Summer, comes the advent of many other great things in my life: aperol spritz at the cafe beneath my building, beach trips with new friends, tennis with old friends, sporadic run-ins with feisty churchgoers debating whether morning tea should be held on the lawn or in the hall, lying on my couch listlessly every Sunday afternoon between 5 and 6pm listening to Lady Gaga while waiting for my sun-flooded apartment to stop being unbearably hot, and, perhaps best of all: Summer Reading.
Now, Readers, Summer Reading gets a bad rap. We all know it. We’ve all been duly ashamed when our great aunt spies the baby-blue paperback in our bags and loudly remarks, “Are you enjoying that, darling? Good for you. Sally told me it was an excellent ‘beach read.’” - no doubt pronouncing “beach read” in such a way that you spend the rest of your evening referencing whatever scraps of Shakespeare you can remember, just so that no one doubts your intellectual sophistication.
Readers. This reputation is entirely undeserved. I’ve already said my piece about the virtues of fun fiction vs. serious fiction (see: The Last Mrs. Parrish). But Summer Reading is not all “fun” nor is it all “beach worthy.” No, Readers, for me, what characterises a great summer book is pace. Summer books should move slowly. They should meander, and dwell, and allow their characters to stew. They should be overthought. And yes, they should be fun and emotional and melodramatic. Sue me. We all know we want it.
It is because of these criteria, and not for any lack of literary quality (which it has in more spades than I could ever hope to accomplish), that I submit to you Sally Rooney’s Normal People as a great summer read. The premise is this: the wrong-side-of-the-tracks Connell and right-side-but-misunderstood Marianne begin a tentative friendship in their final years of high school. This connection, which begins inauspiciously, becomes the inescapable gravitational center of their lives, as Connell and Marianne move into adulthood - a fraught, beautiful relationship around which all other aspects of their lives helplessly rotate. Normal People is a love story and a coming of age story all in one.
Readers, Normal People gets a lot of things right - deep characterization, poetic prose, sharp dialogue - but the thing I want to talk about is more tonal than structural or literary: it’s the slow burn. Which is, in essence, just a paraphrase for the diligent exploration of those eternal questions that plague every love story: Will they or won’t they? They’re friends now, but will they be more? Can’t they see they’re meant for each other? Can they survive this? Can they forgive this? Can they learn to be happy?
The way Rooney gets it right is by letting the relationship burn on and on. We follow these two characters, a single relationship, over many years and many pages, dwelling upon it and un-stitching it at the seams. By the end, all is laid bare for examination and scrutiny. There are no hidden pieces, very little is skipped over, or left to imagination: this is two people coming together and then apart and then together again in excruciating, beautiful detail.
Queen Elizabeth I once said, “Playwrights teach us nothing about love. They make it pretty, they make it comical, or they make it lust, but they cannot make it true” (okay, it was actually Judy Dench who said this in Shakespeare in Love, but she was playing Queen Elizabeth at the time). I tend to agree with the Queen. But in Normal People, Sally Rooney has taken us a step closer to disproving the statement. She portrays with surefooted-accuracy the revolutions of a relationship, the tragic moments of undeniable pain, and the ecstatic joy of recognising in each other - at long last, despite bad timing, and other loves, and damn-the-consequences - whatever it is you’ve been searching for.
For me, the slow burn of Normal People reminded me of two things. (1) When you have been with your spouse or partner for a very long time, it may be easy to to forget the phenomenal good luck you’ve had, the sacrifices you’ve made, and perhaps even the trials and tribulations you have endured to find and keep that person, but it is never safe to assume that your story is over. It isn’t. (2) When you have not yet found that person, brace yourself. It won’t be easy when it comes. Which is to say, Rooney shows us that true, life-lasting love is always long and never quick. It may start fast, but it always ends slow - played out through reprieves and firestorms and hopefully long periods of contentment over the course of a lifetime.
Here is Rooney, describing the power two people can have over one another, in her clear, simple style: “She had been sad before, after the film, but now she was happy. It was in Connell’s power to make her happy. It was something he could just give, like money or sex… He was the only one who knew her like that.”