Sally Rooney - Blog Posts
Ohhhhhhhhh i have some RAGE against Normal People by Sally Rooney. Can I understand, intellectually, that there are legitimate reasons to like this book? Yes. Do I emotionally agree with any of them? ABSOLUTELY NOT. First off this book was impossible to read easily because of the lack of punctuation, what was up with that!! Beyond that the relationship between the two main characters was just bad and really imbalanced, and also I was not interested at all. Also the weak ass Marxist commentary??? Girl didn't even commit 🤣 And to top it all off, I read this for a bookclub for a college that I did all the precollege stuff for, and they DIDN'T EVEN LET ME IN!!!!!! Anyways fuck this book so much, enjoy my rant :)
I accept and appreciate your offering.
It's bullshit that they didn't let you in. Book clubs are supposed to bring people together, but some of them get so snobby.
t h o u g h t s
It's been a few minutes,
My head on your shoulder, your arm around me
Neither of us utters a word.
What are you thinking?
You ask, breaking the silence.
I'm thinking,
About the day we finally accepted how we felt,
And then the world tilted, the hourglass turned,
How every day we're slipping away, gradually
One sand grain at a time.
I'm thinking,
How unfortunate it is that our fate's already written
That we were to be like parallel lines
Destined to be together
But not with each other.
I'm thinking,
How long are we going to take it, one day at a time?
One call, one heart emoji, one I miss you at a time.
Like a recovering addict,
Each day takes us twelve steps away from each other.
I'm thinking,
How the time we are together is snowglobe moments.
How we are confined to only a moment in time.
While the world around us moves on and on.
And we relive one perfect yet fragile moment.
I'm thinking,
How we belong to each other today,
For now.
How wonderful it'll be if the world ends today.
While you are mine and I'm yours.
So I don't have to see tomorrow.
When the hourglass is finally empty
When either of the parallel lines ends.
When we are so apart that we stand out of sight
When the snow globe falls to the floor, waking us up.
Instead,
I try to come back to that second,
To your voice, eyes, and presence,
Instead, I say,
I'm thinking about getting ice cream.
Back home, Connell’s shyness never seemed like much of an obstacle to his social life, because everyone knew who he was already, and there was never any need to introduce himself or create impressions about his personality. If anything, his personality seemed like something external to himself, managed by the opinions of others, rather than anything he individually did or produced. Now he has a sense of invisibility, nothingness, with no reputation to recommend him to anyone.
- Normal people by Sally Rooney
Normal people by Sally Rooney
“All these years they´ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions.”
I don´t really have an opinion on this novel, only emotions, which probably is the best compliment you can give a writer, even if the emotions aren’t entirely pleasant ones. But then, pleasantries are not what books are for. Normal people is an incredibly simplistic book, and I mean that in the best way possible. The language is light and easy, because it doesn’t need to be anything else to fit the story and its characters.
Marianne and Connell grow up in the same small town in the Irish countryside. Connell is, despite his shyness, quite popular and well-liked, while Marianne´s opinionated personality and her overall weirdness makes her an outsider for her classmates. Because Connell´s mother works for Marianne´s rich family, they get to know each other outside of school and start sleeping with each other, only to realise how much they like each other and how close they have grown. This ends before they go off to college, but there, they meet again. Now, Marianne has a big group of friends and is highly admired, whereas Connel struggles with fitting in at Trinity, especially because of his social status. Still, he and Marianne find their way back to each other and stay close over the next years, sometimes romantically involved with each other, sometimes as each other´s friends or confidantes.
“It´s not like this with other people.”
With them growing and growing up, the relationship is constantly shifting. I wouldn’t call this novel a love story. It is more that these two people have an understanding about how they are respectively, and who they are to each other. It is a story about life and about growth and things that happen to us and things we do to ourselves and to others. It is, needless to say, a wonderful story.
„He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her.”
"Bom, nĂŁo me sinto digna de amor. Acho que eu tenho um tipo pouco amável de... Eu tenho uma certa frieza, sou difĂcil de gostar."
Pessoas normais, Sally Rooney
"Peggy acha que os homens sĂŁo animais asquerosos sem nenhum domĂnio de seus impulsos, e que as mulheres deviam evitar depender do apoio emocional deles."
Pessoas normais, Sally Rooney
Dove sei, mondo bello
Trama: Alice ha scritto due romanzi di enorme successo, ma per trovare compagnia deve andare su Tinder. Eileen lavora per una rivista letteraria, però non ci paga l'affitto. Simon ama da sempre la stessa donna, ma da sempre ne frequenta altre. Felix passa in birreria il tempo libero dal lavoro di magazziniere, ma la sua è una fuga. Alice, Eileen, Simon e Felix si parlano, si fraintendono, si deludono e si amano e, mentre attraversano il cerchio di fuoco dei trent'anni, si chiedono se esista davvero, al di là , ancora, un mondo bello in cui sperare.
Questo libro mi è stato regalato per natale, nonostante fosse già in ogni caso nella mia tbr. Avevo aspettative abbastanza alte, considerando quanto mi ero trovata coinvolta da Persone Normali.
Purtroppo, devo dire che le mie aspettative sono state deluse. Ho trovato lo stile di scrittura scadente, quando nel secondo pubblicato dalla Rooney invece risultava ancora fresco e pieno di novitĂ .
Sarà sicuramente anche colpa dei tempi in cui viviamo oggi, dove tutto evolve ad una velocità impressionante e ciò che era nuovo ieri, oggi già ci annoia. Però devo anche dire che ho trovato l'evoluzione di stile da un romanzo del 2018 ad uno del 2021 veramente minima, anzi, retrocedente. Il lettore sa avvertire la sincerità oppure una forzatura da parte dello scrittore, nella scelta delle parole e dei temi.
Partendo da un'idea di fondo anche carina, adatta a mantenere l'intrattenimento attivo con l'alternarsi di prosa narrativa e un format da e-mail, purtroppo non ha saputo spiccare il volo.
I voli pindarici che affrontano entrambe le protagoniste in queste mail, forzatamente intellettualiste ed innaturali, risultano quasi irritanti. Con questo non intendo che in letteratura non possano esistere personaggi pretenziosi, soprattutto considerando che la gran parte degli scrittori stessi peccano di questo vizio, ma bisogna saperlo scrivere con proposito.
La componente autobiografica nel personaggio di Alice, scrittrice trentenne irlandese esattamente come Rooney, è evidente. Le riflessioni sul mondo letterario contemporaneo sono state interessanti, e la domanda di fondo sulla possibilità di fare letteratura in un mondo come il nostro è valida e realistica.
La componente sul discorso sulla salute mentale è un po' un buco nell'acqua, affronta in superfice un argomento sin troppo delicato, mancando l'opportunità di approfondimento.
La storia d'amore tra Eileen e Simon mi ha lasciata dubbiosa. Non comprendo il tratto in entrambe le protagoniste di completa sottomissione ai rispettivi partner, dove viene non solo esplicitato, ma addirittura elogiato il bisogno femminile di approvazione maschile. Entrambe si lasciano trattare malamente, e si autocelebrano per questo. Eileen ha un'evoluzione narrata dall'infanzia di una personalitĂ ferita, e anzi che accompagnare il personaggio verso un risolvimento personale, Rooney decide di mantenerla statica nella sua sottomissione a Simon, elogiato come uomo perfetto nella sua cristianitĂ .
Credo sia fondamentale ricordaci che la letteratura è tutta, al suo nucleo, un simbolo, un messaggio. Una scrittrice con una target audience di giovani ragazze, dovrebbe ricordarlo ancor di più e non dimenticare che i suoi personaggi non restano suoi, vengono assorbiti dalle personalità delle sue lettrici.
Il confine tra la rappresentazione di una fetta di società , la rappresentazione delle convinzioni malate che le donne si ritrovano a dover combattere e la sua normalizzazione è sottile.
Per oggi è tutto, alla prossima! Se avete suggerimenti per altre recensioni sentitevi liberi di commentare xx
normal people shuffle.
please use credit if you use :)
I was in Periplus Setiabudi One Central Jakarta to meet a friend of mine. A funny story behind this meeting is that we were bonding over mutual interest in the novel The Secret History. She and I have the same favorite character, which obviously is Henry Marchbanks Winter. That was our second meeting, so it wasn't that awkward anymore.
I am also thankful that I was able to bring two of my book wishlists: Any Ozamu Dazai's book and Normal People by Sally Rooney. Honestly, I wasn't planning to bring The Setting Sun home because I intended to buy the other one, No Longer Human. Due to the availability of No Longer Human's old cover book, I chose to bring The Setting Sun instead. The publisher of Osamu Dazai books, which version I bought, has a distinctive book cover style that matches each other. These beautiful covers surely would be my priority wishlist for the next year.
Due to many new activities I've had these past 2 months, I am trying my best now to start reading again and stacking that habit once again so I won't easily fall into a reading slump. I have not even been able to finish my current read since November. Not because the book is boring, but it was just me who gets tired easily to even be done with 10 pages minimum.
But, all good now, at least I'm trying and actually do read, although it's quite hard to beat my sleepiness.
this week in the book community~
•queer show with little flying leaves renewed
•dysfunctional family with superpowers 3 trailer
•musician that's been acting as therapist gets doctorate
•you can throw a party full of everyone you know, and not invite your family ’cause they never showed you love
•white people having extramarital affairs and being communists
•"fans will have complicated feelings about chain of thorns ending"
I am Marianne and Connell's love child, i have the worst of both of them.
"Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was and become part of it. She had that feeling in school often, but it wasn’t accompanied by any specific images of what the real life might look or feel like. All she knew was that when it started, she wouldn’t need to imagine it anymore."
NORMAL PEOPLE, Sally Rooney
shit dudes, I relate to this feeling more than I probably should -