When breaking the rules works - Normal People

I know I’m late to the party.

Normal People became a sensation about six years ago, and I’m only just picking up the book now. It takes a lot to encourage me to read something when it gets blisteringly popular. Maybe I’m afraid it will never meet the hype, or maybe I just fancy myself above popular culture (probably the latter - what a snob!)

I am perhaps embarrassed to say that it was watching the BBC adaptation that got me hooked. Obsessed. I knew the book had been a bit Marmite - some didn’t like the lack of speech marks flagging the dialogue, but I’d read a few books like this so wasn’t too concerned. What I hadn’t expected was for it to read almost like stage directions.

Stage directions - show, don’t tell?

The age-old adage of “show don’t tell” seems to have been booted to the sidelines by Rooney. She tells us exactly what they are doing and exactly what they are thinking and feeling. She’s breaking all the rules. But damn… it works.

We all know the rules are there to be broken, but Rooney opened my eyes to an entirely new style of writing. She places enormous emphasis on interiority; I have never felt quite so deeply inside a character’s head. I think it takes a powerful understanding of the human psyche to write such self-aware (and yet very unaware) characters like Connell and Marianne.

And - I’m going to contradict myself here, i know - she also does, in a sense, show and not tell. Her briefest lines of action are so delicately crafted that they speak for almost more than the all the rest of the inner description. She puts absolute faith in you as a reader when she leaves actions to speak in place of emotion. We have to fill in so many gaps, but it left me feeling satisfied, like I was a friend interpreting their behaviour.

Flashbacks and time hops - manipulating the reader?

Now, were the constant time jumps disorienting and confusing at times? Yes. I think perhaps they were overused, and we could have done with a little more linear narrative, but I think they served a purpose. They enabled us to experience a character’s choices through another’s eyes.

Let me explain. When Connell and Marianne break up, we find out about it with little explanation or detail other than Connell asked to see other people. This blunt and unelaborated description leaves the reader with as much whiplash as Marianne surely felt. When we later gain further understanding, we start to see their miscommunication, discovering it along with Marianne.

As I said before, this technique is effective, but perhaps in smaller doses. Too much, and the reader starts feeling manipulated. And you never want your reader to feel manipulated.

THAT scene

Hopefully, anyone who has seen the BBC version will know the one I mean. Where Connell is sitting in a therapist’s office, and in one shot, Paul Mescal shatters your heart. For me, that will go down as some of the best acting TV has ever seen. It was raw, and honest, and beautiful, and was a moment that men everywhere needed.

And despite the interiority that Rooney expertly crafted throughout the book, here I really think Mescal stole the show. Perhaps you needed to feel the pauses, see the pain in Connell’s face as he finally breaks and confesses he doesn’t feel her belongs. Is it physically possible for Rooney to have conveyed on the page what Mescal did on the screen? I don’t know. But damn, it was incredible.

The end - hear me out

This is the part I feel guilty about. As a profound lover of books, my loyalty has always lain with the written word over the telly box. But on this occasion, the award for best ending does have to rest with the BBC. They managed to balance an emotive and satisfying character arc for both Connell and Marianne with the bittersweet reality that love doesn’t always work out.

Rooney’s ending didn’t quite land for me. It felt cold, almost as if the characters hadn’t quite learned what they needed to and were simply drifting apart in another cruel act of fate. It’s unclear if Marianne really has the emotional maturity to let Connell go or if she is pushing him away in another act of self-sabotage.

So, hats off to the BBC. Their ending made me sob, while Rooney’s left me feeling a little empty, like a meal at a fancy restaurant that doesn’t quite touch the sides.

Drop me a message and let me know what you thought of Normal People, the BBC or the book. And if you’ve not tried either, I really do recommend you give them a go!