Normal People. By Sally Rooney. Faber & Faber; 266 pages; £14.99. To be published in America by Hogarth in April; $26.
SALLY ROONEY’S first novel, “Conversations with Friends”—the story of the fluctuating friendship of two Dublin college students and their involvement with an older married couple—was a deserved success. Her follow-up, “Normal People”, which has been longlisted for the Man Booker prize, is a lovely, mostly painful examination of the agonising, will-they-won’t-they relationship between two characters, Connell and Marianne.
Ms Rooney’s prose remains precise and fluent, but the mood is darker, the tempo quicker. Whereas “Conversations with Friends” breathed new life into the novel of adultery, “Normal People” bends the conventions of boy-meets-girl, boy-rejects-girl, girl-rejects-boy (and so on) to create a book of piercing insight. Her work is reminiscent of Jane Austen, belabouring her two inches of ivory,...
from The Economist: Books and arts https://ift.tt/2MPOqJ0
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