Reflections on Reading ‘Normal People’

I tried to read a book during this winter vacation, and I chose the book called ‘Normal People’. It is written by Sally Rooney who comes from Irish.

It mainly tells the love story of Marianne and Connell. Marian remained silent during the period of domestic violence and was isolated by others at school, while Cornell was popular in the school community. They were brought together by their inner loneliness, and separated because of each other's inferiority. Since then, they have been on and off again and again from high school to college.

Reading the book is a very big challenge, even pain for me. Not only is reading an original English a big difficulty in English, but also the complex and delicate feelings between the male master and the female master. My poor English and colliding emotions make me whiny, the vulnerability and inferiority of Marianne and Connell are so real that I want to throw up.

Someone translates ‘Normal People’ as ‘正常人’ or ‘普通人’, I think it should be ‘正常人’, because Marianne and Connell are not normal people, they are smart with low self-esteem, Marianne showed it inner and Connell showed it external.

In general, ‘Normal people’ show ordinary love between two abnormal people and it’s very heartbreaking. Anyway, it managed to make me, a straight man with no romantic relationship experience, feel excruciating pain.