August Reflected in a Lake
Book Choice for August 2020: Normal People by Sally Rooney
I wasn’t going to write about this book, for reasons of aspiration and snobbery. During the summer I also heard Can you Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope on audiobook, which was a re-read for me of sorts! I first read it when I was 16, but could only recall the main character’s names and the ending. Anyway, CYFH “fit” in better with my reading “plans,” so much that I was going to ignore the other book which I definitely read in August, devoured in two days beside a lake. That’s where the snobbery comes in–that I didn’t feel like admitting Normal People by Sally Rooney into my precious “12 Books a Year.” This feeling might come from internalised misogyny regarding romance novels (although they really aren’t my thing) and a pinch of native elitism. Native to me, I mean.
I told myself, I’m going to write about CYFH on the blog, as there is a very specific dear girl in England who I want to sit at a kitchen table with to fully eviscerate Normal People. I still do want to do that, whenever life permits, however, I was due for a contemporary read, one that, you know, other people now alive are reading. It’s not a crime to be, in the tiniest way, up to date. As well, about 15 years ago I came across the term “literary roughage” in an article, coined by I know not who, but which I have never forgotten. This means—after pushing yourself a bit to understand deep thoughts in high-style, one should also read a bit of literary ‘junk food.’
This is not at all to say that Normal People is trash, I only mean that it is a comparatively lighter read, for me, than say, Cesar’s Commentaries or the Palliser novels (the Palliser novels don’t cause me to sink in and relax, I find them rather strenuous). I just advocate that one should mix it up, vary your diet—and this also means avoiding proscriptive lists that you may discover that you are not actually looking forward to “completing”—especially when classics hang around on a to-read list for awhile they can feel like “to-do’s” and little else.
In August I read Normal People beside a lake. We had snuck away camping for three days and it was very interesting to do it on our own as backpackers without the caravan of vehicles and full-size barbeque that my family believes it is necessary to camp with. In the end the ground was so hard and our sleeping mats so inefficient that we cut our stay by one night. Our thirty-something bones couldn’t bear it!
But it was lovely by the lake. And to get away from the house, all responsibilities, and sort of face each other, and ourselves, without any daily tasks beyond preparing a meal and lying in the sun. It was really enjoyable, and also a bit stenuous, in the way of suddenly having free time to wander around in one’s own mind sometimes is. When I wanted to be occupied I turned the pages of Normal People, and it was very engrossing–although I found I was able to put it down when I had had enough of super-humanly self-possessed and self-aware teenagers.
There were things I hated about this book. I can live my entire life without reading about another graceful, thin, wistful, helpless sad girl. The way this girl was sad does not exactly ring true–and is a bit of a “obvious” line to draw between happy poor families and messed-up rich families, but ok. The female protagonist was…a bit of a princess in a tower, which is something I just can’t get behind. She was self-destructive and that is a true enough result of being sad, but still…Oh, wherefore art the bolshie girls who eat normally, suffer yes, are misunderstood terribly, but save themselves? Well, not in this book. Actually I was so struck by the way that Nymphette’s lack of appetite was almost sexualized, and they way in which disordered eating was romanticized and made to seem almost appealing that I nearly called this review Normal People Gave Me an Eating Disorder. But that would be hyperbole, and disrespectful to people actually suffering, so I refrained. I really can’t condemn this trope strongly enough though, if the lead girl isn’t a perfect beautiful far-off cipher, is the only alternative sad-waif? That seems so tired.
Anyway, the writing in this novel is good, obviously, millions have said it before I. It really draws you in. I did was totally unprepared for one or two tears to suddenly well, up, unbidden from a place deep inside me, totally forgotten about. It was a bit of a shock and in a single instant paid the price of admission. So there was magic here, although in some ways I cannot shake my skepticism–and I do not like how hard I’m being on this book, I’m being much harder on the book of a woman younger than me that I am on boring works of old men dead and gone.
Why?
Well, that’s the thing about internalised misogyny, it’s old and buried deep within the flesh, sinew filaments grafted to bone. What is also mentioned a lot in discussions of this book are it’s “Marxist tendencies.” In general I didn’t think it was so daring that way, except one scene that sticks out, when the poor guy wins a scholarship and for a little while can enjoy the life many of his rich peers take for granted, while Nymphette has also worked hard and won the same scholarship but can only see it as an intellectual feather in her cap–the fact that it provides MONEY and freedom as well as status as one of the smartest young people at the uni is completely lost on her, because she doesn’t have money worries.
This is something I have noticed ever since I first went to uni, and even then felt was galling and ridiculous, that rich, and naturally often better prepared students were allowed to compete for scholarships that they didn’t in any way need, but merely pursued for the sake of their own vanity, and perhaps, CV. I have never seen this particular gripe expressed in writing though. Its valuable that this book includes it, but is that enough for this book to “be” Marxist? There are so many other class-based obsessions in England and Ireland that to comment on the fact that a poor-ish dude might have difficulty ending up with a quite rich girl—and Nymphette IS quite rich, she doesn’t have to work in the holidays, but instead goes on actual holidays which allow her to rest from her academic labours, and enjoy herself in large rented houses in foreign cities with other rich friends, (who are mostly knobs by the way, is that also a social commentary the book was making?)
It makes me recall how in high school, a well-off girl asked me why I worked after school–I just wanted some spending money of my own. She told me “I don’t work because school is my job“—and I still don’t know exactly why I found that so noteworthy that I have remembered it for 20 years. I mean, I had all my basic needs covered but I wanted to express myself with clothes and have some freedom, and it didn’t really seem to be the done thing to ask for money anytime I wanted some. I certainly wasn’t applying myself hard to my schoolwork at the time, so it may have shocked me to hear that some people did, but it was more the the total certainty (and some superiority) in her voice and expression. I think I know now what I thought then,
“That’s what rich people tell their children, that school is their job.”
It’s one of those very small-seeming privileges, which can equate to huge things regarding how your life works out, it is a very real thing that economic factors draw invisible frames around the dreams that different people are permitted to dream. I’m not referring to my experience here, I have been impervious to reality (and my own limitations) for a long time, but at some basic level this has been because I have grown up in the massive lending culture of North America and I have been able, on the basis of one parent’s stable job, been able to access credit.
It seems like “privilege” has been the buzzword of the last 5 to 10 years; honestly, someone should do a study charting the increased use of that that word. For this and many other reasons it isn’t so surprising that Normal People has been such a lightning rod for various class-based discussions. It seems like there should be MANY other books which comment on contemporary social class—but maybe there aren’t. Maybe we have tricked ourselves into thinking its a thing of the Victorian past. It seems odd that we need it in such a basic format, poor boy//rich girl before we can GET that it’s a problem, but ok, whatever it takes to get people talking about the reason under the reason that Marianne wouldn’t, in the future, end up marrying Connell, someone she is deeply in love with. The reason under the reason is class—the reason on top of the reason SHOULD BE that he treats her like crap and can’t express a basic feeling yay or nay regarding her if someone had him at gunpoint.
Did I care about the characters? Nope, but in just one instance I flitted effortlessly into her shoes, and saw that kind of mad love again. Still, she should never have stuck around after such treatment as she got in the beginning of the book–alas, we often do, once or twice—and if she hadn’t, it would have been a very short book. So. Is this book deserving of being included in my precious roster of 12 books a year?
I guess the answer is…
…certainly.