Monday, April 20, 2020

Normal People is a Rotten Novel

Some "normal people", apparently.
The TV adaptation of Normal People, the phenomenally successful second novel by Irish author Sally Rooney, runs to twelve episodes. This is the latest news to stagger your faithful correspondent, for whom the success of Normal People exists at a similar level of bafflement as the placement of the figs in the fig rolls.

Normal People is a superficial, shallow, vain, vacuous, mutton-headed book about the first-world problems of a poor little rich girl. The characterisation would bring a blush to cardboard, the human insight is blind, the subtly is that of a cavity block and, if Sally Rooney’s really is the voice of a generation, that generation is an unusually stupid one.

Novels are written in three broad styles. These aren’t hard and fast guidelines, of course, more like familial resemblances than any scientifically rigorous classification, but useful for aiding our understanding and comparing our experiences.

The first family is the traditional story. There is a protagonist who does things, and these things are described in the course of the book. These books are generally set in a world that is real and recognisable. Emile Zola is typicalof this school. He thought it the novelist’s duty to go out in the world, and then report on what he or she saw there.

The second style is the window-on-the-soul school, of which Henry James may be considered the trailblazer. Acolytes consider such things as plots and story arcs passé and, for some reason, particularly prize the composition of the sentences in a novel, which are, ideally, exquisite. Colm Tóibín would be a leading member of this school.

The third style is avant garde, where the writer writes utter gibberish that can be understood by neither man nor beast, but we all pretend that they’re capital-P-Profound because we don’t want to look thick. Thomas Pynchon is the pope of this church, and Gravity’s Rainbow its sacred text.

To which school does Sally Rooney belong? Well. That’s hard to say.

Normal People is set in contemporary Ireland, rural Sligo and Dublin. Neither place is recognisable in the novel. A quick example: early in the book, the hero, Connell, is having an argument with his mother, Lorraine. Lorraine is so annoyed with Connell that she tells him to stop the car, she’s going to get out and get the bus home.

It is to be hoped that Lorraine packed a lunch, because she could be waiting a long time on that bus if she’s living in a small town in Sligo. I’m not sure how many rural Irish towns have public transport, but if there were any such towns in Sligo I feel I would have heard.

The book is full of these chasms in reality. Marianne, the book’s heroine, goes from social isolation at school to being the It-Girl amongst the freshers in college. That doesn’t happen. It takes time to learn social skills. You can’t just put them on like a hat.

Connell is from a working class background. He also has his own car and can afford to go back-packing in Italy while in college. Who pays that bill? Connell is embarrassed to tell his mother that he voted for Declan Bree, the venerable Sligo socialist. Lorraine voted for Bree as well – she’s a big fan, and has educated Connell about “Cuba and the cause of Palestinian liberation.” Why would Connell be embarrassed to agree with his mother? It doesn’t make any sense. Connell is appalled when a female teacher makes an advance on him in a nightclub. Come on, now. On what planet does that happen?

Only one part of Normal People feels real, and that’s in Italy, where Marianne is entertaining her college set and the back-packing Connell in her father’s villa. Marianne’s horrible college boyfriend Jamie – a pantomime villan, if ever there were one – gets snotty when the champagne is not served in flute glasses. Marianne points out that these are champagne coupes, *actually*, but the damage is done. We’re drinking out of gravy boats, sneers Jamie, and he means it to sting.

That part reads like an eye-witness account. That exchange was only part of the novel in which your correspondent was able to believe could have happened. The rest is narcissistic, pseudo-intellectual rubbish and how in God’s holy name the makers of the TV show have got twelve episodes out of it is baffling.

They’ve either stuffed it like a sausage with whatever offcuts or offal or dog or cat they could lay hands on, or else they’ve stretched it out, like someone buttering the bread for the harvest festival in the Presbyterian Hall. James Marriott wrote in The Times that he “finished the book determined to look at the world differently. I’m not sure what higher compliment you can pay a novel.” Sooner you than me, hoss.

FOCAL SCOIR: The New York Times previewed the TV show last week as “a rare TV show about teenagers that respects intimacy as a powerful storytelling tool, both on and off camera,” and praised the show for hiring an “intimacy co-ordinator.” Thank goodness the intimacy co-ordinator never went to so far as to suggest that the actress who portrays Marianne keep her clothes on. Nobody would have known where to look.