Normal People by Sally Rooney

Hardcover, read May 2019

This was an incredible book: I’m in love with Rooney’s writing, the dialogue, the pacing, everything about it comes together to make this swift and shudderingly accurate story about, yeah, normal people. But it’s devastating!! Two anxious people just missing each other over and over again because they can’t get out of their own heads.

“She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens up before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.”

It only took me a few days to read and I was carrying it around trying to take a picture of it outside, because I love the colours of the cover (designed by Elena Givaldi) and it’s been raining nonstop and all the grass outside is absolutely vibrant, but I never did get the picture, so I had to settle for the yellow mug.
I adored the writing and pacing and rhythm and flow of this book, I loved that it’s not about a dramatic or defining moment and that it really is just about normal people, about life, but goodness gracious it made me very, very, very sad.