Normal People by Sally Rooney

They should never have been friends.  Connell is popular at school, a jock, smart and in the top circle socially.  Marianne is totally unpopular, the girl everyone talks about and makes fun of.  She can be found by herself reading a book and ignoring everyone who makes her life uncomfortable.  She is acknowledged as the smartest person in the class and wealthy but that doesn't give her any status.  The two develop a relationship outside of school and even there it shouldn't have happened.  Connell's mother cleans house for Marianne's family.  The two ignore each other at school but soon they develop a sexual relationship outside the prying eyes of their classmates.  It continues until close to the end of high school when Connell does an unforgivable thing to Marianne.

Cut to college.  Both end up at Trinity College in Dublin.  There the roles are reversed.  Marianne has an active social life and is doing great in school.  Her life is the one she has dreamed of living as she always knew better things were waiting once she got away from the small town she grew up in.  Connell is not as lucky.  The traits that made him popular in high school don't seem to count for much at Trinity and he finds it difficult to make connections.  He ends up at a party and finds his host is dating Marianne.  They reconnect and end up living together but at the end of the year a conversation that is misconstrued by each leads to the end of their time together.

As the months and then years go by, Marianne and Connell's relationship endures although in various forms.  They see each other through other relationships but there is a draw to each other that pulls them together time after time.  Will this be an enduring relationship and are they even right for each other?

Sally Rooney has written a very readable novel about modern romance.  There are lots of other people at the periphery of Connell and Marianne's relationship and sometimes they seem to be more important to the two than their love for each other.  There is a casualness to love in this novel that is probably more realistic than the mantra of the one true love many readers were brought up to believe but it is a bleaker life than a relationship that puts the other first forever.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction and also for parents that need to understand what love is like for their children in today's world.