Why Sally Rooney’s Breakthrough Novel Struck Millennial Gold
Image by Edna Bowe
By Ruby Staley
Lately, more than ever, I’ve been craving a sense of normality.
Not just the work and structure and routines that used to glue my life together pre-COVID, but the simple interactions, familiar spaces and even the bores of everyday life, that I’ve surprisingly missed the most.
Knowing this, I turned to my own devices (or more literally my well-loved iPhone 5) for some comfort rather than spiralling for the remainder of my social isolation. At a time of collective and internal crisis, I found only mere moments of solace between the pages of a romance novel or amid my periodic scrolling. But watching sensationalised daily routines on Instagram and airbrushed vlogs by the filthy-rich on YouTube didn’t satisfy my craving for realistic people watching like I’d hoped.
After seeing it all over social media, I fell victim to peer pressure and jumped into the new BBC adaption of Sally Rooney’s, Normal People. And let me tell you, it was the best thing I have done this month. Binging the entire season in one sitting (such self-control!), I was delivered the most delicious serving of regular life, with a side of spicy intimacy, that I had clearly been craving.
Rooney’s 2018 smash-hit romance novel, and now ridiculously popular TV series, quickly grabbed the attention of a large audience. Some critics even referred to it as the, “millennial love story”. Following the lives and the excruciating on-again-off-again romance of Connell and Marianne, it portrays the highs and lows of falling in love and growing up as mutually exclusive things.
The beauty of the story and what makes it so loveable is that it’s relatable, not even in the action but rather in the spaces in between. It’s in those awkward scenes or moments of miscommunication when it feels truly painful and real. It was something in these interactions that kept me watching, eyes glued to the screen.
Having read the novel months earlier, I knew what I was in for but a combination of timing and context made the story all the more poignant. And I am certainly not alone. My news feeds have been blowing up with people going crazy for the show, re-reading the book, thirsting over the characters (and their corresponding actors) and even creating fan pages for a certain sexy piece of jewellery (see @connellschain).
Written at a time that far pre-dates the COVID-19 outbreak, how was Rooney to know that this was what we as a society would not only want, but need? The timing of the TV show’s release was sheer coincidence, right place, right time kind of thing. However the story taps into something we have been unconsciously longing for, for quite a while.
While speaking to friends and family about why the book is so loved, I found consistencies within our discussions. When I boiled down my own thoughts, they reached a similar conclusion. Sally Rooney’s genius is not found in creative or outlandish plot lines, surprise twists or unbelievable situations, but in shedding light on the typically overlooked banalities of life. Her writing proves there is some merit to reflecting true humanity, for all its nuances, complexities and bores.
““I’m interested in inhabiting the idea of normal and trying to subvert it from within.””
In an interview with Kishani Widyaratna for the London Review Bookshop, Rooney touched on this idea of exploiting ‘normality’ as source material, explaining that she enjoys writing about “experiences that are in fact completely banal, but that don’t necessary conform to our narratives about what normality is”. She added, “I’m interested in inhabiting the idea of normal and trying to subvert or question it from within”. With Normal People, Rooney draws in readers with the promise of the familiar and subverts the definition of ‘normal’ to examine its existence.
Both of Rooney’s main character’s wrangle with this notion of normalcy, finding themselves to be somewhere outside the square. Marianne feels alienated by normality and Connell is desperate to cling to his perceived normalcy. Marianne is a strong female character who’s ironically masochistic. Connell doesn’t quite fit the bill of a popular, jock type because, rather than being overbearingly boisterous, he is often internally stunted by crippling anxiety. These dichotomies that exist within them, without lending themselves to cliché, make them all the more human.
The relationship they share is devoid of a tidy beginning, middle and end. Their story isn’t sign posted by grand gestures and sudden moments of clarity, but rather full of uncertainty and confusion. Rooney’s leading characters are those with true nuance, rather than giving Connell and Marianne half-baked, two dimensional personalities, she paints an intricate picture of them. She layers their traits one on top of each other like thick gouache, taking her time to prove that each character is flawed, and that each contains goodness.
Although Connell and Marianne could be considered at surface level to be ‘normal’ by conventional definitions, their complexities and humanity give them away. Some have criticised Rooney’s inability (or refusal) to summon a resolution for her characters and the stories they live within, but for me this is the most reflective component of her writing. After all life as we experience it and as she describes, does goes on despite any adversity.
In my pursuit for normalcy born from my boredom in isolation, I realised that what I was searching for in fact, didn’t exist. There is no truly such thing as normal, no real signifiers or routines – it’s completely subjective. It only exists if you believe it to be so. And even so, striving for normalcy has become a rite of passage in modern literature, and modern life, and although the state of being ‘normal’ isn’t at all reflected by reality, we aren’t yet deterred from attempts to attain it.