BookNotes, Fiction # Normal People #### by Sally Rooney (2018) ### ★☆☆☆☆ Had a hard time finishing this one. It felt shallow to me, plain, with a puerile writing style and a simplistic and mostly unrealistic portrayal of teenagers.  I had the feeling it was a story told by someone who deep down feared that they had nothing to say, and who was trying really hard to pretend like they were somebody with something to say. So this book looked to me like their failed attempt at guessing what that might look like. Made me think how we all have something to say, for we all live. Fearing we don't is sad to me, nonsensical and destructive, yet I think many of us have that fear, placed inside us early on. And fear brings about self deceit, which in turn seems to further alienate us from ourselves. So there seems to be one clear way to go about it when we're in that position and it usually begins with becoming aware of this profound self deceit. Once the horror of this realisation passes, we discover that we do have something to say. Then we can start (imagining, creating, building, living). Some things I did appreciate in the book: - how the depression of the lead male character was represented - the believable secondary character of the female lead's brother - a few sensical interactions between the teenagers and the adults ### Quotes I liked "They paused to observe our taxi before moving on. To me it’s weird when animals pause because they seem so intelligent, but maybe that’s because I associate pausing with thought. Deer are elegant anyway I have to say.” -- "Well, here I am on the floor, he thought. Is life so much worse here than it would be on the bed, or even in a totally different location? No, life is exactly the same. ==Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.==" **