Normal People
Sally Rooney (2018)
“Two people who are perfect for each other keep failing to say so — a novel about everything unsaid between people who love each other.”
Character Analysis
A working-class boy whose social capital in secondary school rests on physical ease, athletic success, and an instinct for social performance — none of which transfers to university. The novel tracks what happens when the scaffolding of a social identity is removed: Connell is revealed as thoughtful, literary, emotionally intelligent, and completely unable to ask for what he needs. His goodness is real; his courage is intermittent. The gap between these two facts is where most of the novel's pain lives.
Speaks in short, often incomplete sentences. Avoids abstract vocabulary in dialogue. His inner monologue is more articulate than his speech — the gap between what he thinks and what he says is the source of most of the novel's dramatic tension.