My Black Ass Was Emotionally Rekt by Normal People

Irish novelist Sally Rooney took the literary world by storm with her two best sellers Conversations with Friends (2017) and Normal People (2018). The latter is the subject of Hulu’s recent adaptation done in partnership with the BBC. It features the on-again off-again romance between two young people, Marianne and Connell, throughout their lives. And while most will-they-or-won’t-they romances feel trite by design, Normal People excels in its subtlety. It walks us through two lives, giving more complexity than their romance alone, though their romance holds as their most longstanding point of stability. Part of Normal People’s success is its refusal to put a name to its underlying themes. You won’t hear conversations alluding to the idea of “soul mates” or whether Marianne and Connell are “meant” for each other. Such a lack of acknowledgment comes with its own message, implicit as it might be, that Marianne and Connell have autonomy in the decisions they make with each other, and those decisions come with consequences. Each of Marianne and Connell’s turning-point decisions are ones you both judge and understand. The story does well in not making either a clear hero or villain; I, for one, rarely found one more likable than the other. When certain decisions are made though, you find yourself in the role of Connell’s mother, Lorraine, my most beloved character. After one of Connell’s unmalicious yet hurtful decisions separates him from Marianne, Lorraine is clear where she sta…