What's not to love about people?

House keeping: sorry, I've been absent! Sorry I've been absent!

But in the background I was reading through some great books - the most recent of which is Sally Rooney's Normal People.

The first thing people ask if you say you're reading this is 'Oh, have you read Conversations With Friends?' The answer is no, I haven't. In fact, Goodreads reviewers put me off it, overwhelmingly expressing their dislike for the novel. Luckily I only half-listen to comments on social media, and when Normal People was nominated for the Man Booker Prize this year, I was won over.

Things to (apparently) know about Sally: she is the queen of writing down millennials; she is only 27. She is Irish. This latter book of hers has been deemed a future classic.

Normal People, in theory, should be easy to explain. It's an on and off love affair between two people, Connell and Marianne, who meet in school and their lives keep meeting and rebounding off of each other, without really being able to separate fully. But to quote the very book, "So why, despite its factual accuracy, does this feel like a dishonest way of narrating what happened?"...

What did I like about it?

I love to hate the fact that Sally is only 27, because her writing is exquisite and feels so direct as if she sat down and wrote this in one sitting. It flows like liquid: not once did I stop to look up and think 'that doesn't really make sense', nor did I wonder whether any of it was believable. Her style is distinct (not just because she doesn't use the conventional dash to indicate conversation); it's powerful, to the point, almost completely devoid of dawdling or side-lining. She says what she wants to say, and yet it reads like perfect fiction.

She's an expert in using small motions to demonstrate emotional states: "He looks at her, probably knowing what she's doing, and then looks at his own hands, as if reminding himself of his physical stature in the room."

Another thing that nears perfection is her characterisation. Especially Connell and Marianne, but even the supporting characters feel intimately real. The lead characters are complex, intriguing, and most of all subtle: their baggage is revealed slowly, delicately, always lurking in the background but never quite overtly blurted out. And this foreboding, these shadows that only manifest in full form towards the end of the book, make the novel more hurtful to read as one advances. As it improves, it gnaws at our souls, never satisfying us.

The story also runs the risk of turning melodramatic or clichéd, but for the most part Sally keeps a firm foot on the ground. The ups and downs of the girl-boy power play could easily turn boring - the book does span quite a few years - but the variety of these situations, the delicate indications of who is currently winning somehow makes for a fascinating story. Gripping, in fact. There is building tension at all times, and it feels like she's intentionally keeping our hearts just a little broken at any given moment.

What was I not massively fond of?

Very rarely, but there were moments where the inner worlds of the characters got a little too soppy for my liking, such as "He feels ambivalent about this, as if it's disloyal of him, because maybe he's enjoying how she looks or some physical aspect of her closeness. He's not sure what friends are allowed to enjoy about each other," but to be clear, these were rare instances.

Another thing I wondered about is the occasional tendency to show a situation from both viewpoints, one after the other - would it be better if we only got one person's opinion on a given occurrence? Maybe it would have been a bit more of a challenge, but curious as I am, I don't really mind finding out what both Connell and Marianne thought of something.

Overall...

It's hard to sum up this book. It was hard to read in that it was an internally painful experience. It's not a light-hearted story. It's expertly constructed, outstandingly written and seems to have been created with incredibly cool detachment. It's as if Sally is following around her characters with a notepad, observing from a close distance and noting everything down ("pretend I'm not here!"-style).

It's truly astonishing modern literature, and has every right to win this prize.

9/10