By Lydia Johnson
The Normal People series hit hard, and as one of the last dramas to air before lockdown people were more than ready to sit back and watch the 12-part series without too much care for its outcome. There’s only been good things to say about it from all the reviews I’ve read, and from my own experience watching it, but after reading the book and needing to re-affirm my life before settling down to watch the adaptation. I was cautious as to why so many had fallen in love with it. Are we all just looking for a bad time? Or is the excitement just about Connell’s silver chain and nothing more?
The book itself ‘sold half a million copies in the UK alone and was translated into 25 languages’[1]; as the second novel written by Rooney the series reception has only further helped this young writer’s career blossom. I won’t say I liked the book however. I struggled getting through it and found myself only becoming more depressed the further into the book I got, let alone feeling at a loss with the abrupt end. I finished reading and immediately went for a run, walked round the Alpaca farm across the road, played the piano, carried on with some of my art, and talked to some friends, genuinely hanging onto anything that could just confirm for me that life is actually alright.
The story line follows the love story of Marianne and Connell, classmates from a young age in County Sligo who move in and out of each other’s lives through their school and university years without ever figuring out how to stay together. The book covers a range of issues experienced in a young adult’s life but focuses mainly on the self-discovery and different stages of depression through loss and not knowing who you are in the world. They are characters who, although the story is about their relationship, are expressed on page through their constant feeling of drifting through life not happy with their past, their present and what their futures are looking like. The reason I hated the book so much, I realised, was potentially because I connected with it more than I wanted to.
Fundamentally, though, I really didn’t like the way the book was written, the way Rooney chose to tell their four year story by jumping back and forth, leaving gaps in the timeline. It’s true it only adds to the level of discomfort and is but a reflection of Marianne and Connell’s own disjointed experience over the years. Yet as a reader who likes to fall into the character’s world, it left me on the outside, never fully connecting with the characters in order to empathise with them rather just being forced to experience their lives and their story.
The ending only made it that much worse. Different from how they portrayed it in the TV adaptation, it is much more stark and abrupt. It ends with the discussion of Connell’s acceptance to the New York university, a few lines of conversation in which Connell says he’ll stay for Marianne, how he wouldn’t be able to cope without her, and ends with Marianne telling him to go; ‘You should go, she says.’[2] and that’s it, story’s over, nothing more to tell. Well, that is one way to leave it. When I realised there wasn’t another chapter I was genuinely annoyed, I’d made it that far, forced my way to the end, and that’s how Rooney wants to leave it. Great.
So why was the TV adaption so popular? Clearly these are not normal people and yet everyone was obsessed with the series. Ultimately, the novel is a meditation on friendships, love, mutual fascination, growing up, sexuality, emotional trauma, family, class, and how popularity shapes personalities and relationships well beyond the schoolroom. Yet, with the dark nature of this exploration being the key tone to the novel, I was truly concerned with why people took a shine to the TV series, with such a great reception did the directors go and change the story line into something more uplifting? Well, not quite…
Simple choices, such as making the drama a twelve half an hour episode series rather than the usual six one hour episode series, aided in telling the story in a much more manageable way. With each episode only half an hour long, the story could leave you wanting more, while allowing you a recovery break from the less than cheery subject matter. The series also told the story in a much more A-to-B sequence than Rooney sets out in the book. Allowing the events to flow more naturally meant that the disjointed nature of the original story telling is no longer experienced; instead people can understand Connell and Marianne’s experiences as a natural story line. They even introduced the New York story line earlier than it is in the book forcing the ending into a less here-ends-all manner. Connell and Marianne have two discussions about it, the first ending in a mutual decision that Connell will stay in Dublin. Time passes and then the New York issue is re-evaluated while they are sat among the moving boxes of Marianne’s flat. The discussion ends in a more loving way and almost leads to some closure for the viewers. Connell is also the one who finally says ‘I’ll go’ leaving you with more peace of mind than the book does. Technically this is the same ending, but with the earlier planting of the situation it doesn’t come as such a surprise. Yes, the decision is still potentially surprising, but it isn’t the unknown that it is told as on paper. These few, impactful, decisions for the TV adaptation made it a more approachable drama for the masses. It still dealt with and portrayed Connell and Marianne’s depressing lives but you no longer needed the recovery from this that reading the book led to.
The main reason the TV series was such a hit both for the general audience and the critics, was the phenomenal character portrayals by Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Their brilliant performances are ‘absolutely the versions of Marianne and Connell who live in [our] heads’[3]. The two young actors have truly risen to fame and there is no question in my mind as to why.
Edgar-Jones captures Marianne’s ‘intensity and acumen, her bitterness and damage’[4] flawlessly. While Marianne’s backstory is given much earlier on screen than in the book, allowing an easier understanding of how and why she feels herself unlovable and where this fatal flaw may lead, Edgar-Jones does not let this dampen her commitment to the delicate role. It is true that there is ‘something of, say, She’s All That’[5] in Marianne’s instant transformation from a friendless nerd to the worthy obsession of the hot jock, and the ridiculous number of lifetime movies reflecting the sort of family dysfunction she face. Yet Edgar-Jones delivers a perfect performance of a unique, raw, solitary character in such a way that makes you believe you have never seen anything so truthful on screen before.
Mescal, by her side, only adds, if not pushes further this perfect duo of actors in his heart-wrenchingly vulnerable portrayal of Connell. All of Connell’s intelligence, the shifting limits of his emotional maturity, the self-doubt and the warmth that make him so attractive to Marianne, and the charm that makes his life so easy until they get to Trinity are explored perfectly by Mescal. You truly see the good man struggling to emerge from the cowardice of youth in a way that makes it impossible to not become immersed and impossibly moved. It truly is a ‘triumph in every way’.
Another aspect of the series which I loved, was the true reflection of university and the diversity one can experience there. Both Marianne and Connell’s friends were all genuine people, some reflecting certain stereotypes as the novel required, sure, but every casting opportunity was made to reflect the actual demographic one might experience at university – people from different social and economic backgrounds, people of different shapes, sizes, colour, sexual orientation, all portrayed on screen. It just came as a nice breath of fresh air to me to see the opportunity being taken when this is not always the case.
The last aspect I want to give a shout out to, which could very well be something I have read into more than was intended, was the use of the colour yellow throughout the series, especially in the clothing worn. I’m not sure why, but the colour yellow really stood out to me in the series in a way that I assumed must have been a deliberate decision. Yellow was used to illustrate times of both contentment and acceptance, or lack thereof, in Marianne and Connell’s lives. We see Marianne striding into the exam hall in a yellow shirt, surrounded by the blue school uniform reflecting her contentment in her decision to leave school and finally being true to herself. We see the lack of people wearing yellow in Connell’s lecture rooms, and the dwindling of this number the further into the timeline we go, reflecting the lack of comfort and feeling of ease in Connell at Trinity. We see Marianne return to an old yellow knitted jumper, that she last wore in a moment of bliss at home, when she spends Christmas at Connell’s house, reflecting her experience of feeling accepted and happy over the holiday. We see Connell’s therapist wearing a yellow shirt during his session with her, reflecting the level of acceptance the therapist is giving Connell; this being the opportunity Connell takes to talk freely about his inner-thoughts for the first time. We even see a yellow towel used by a women in the swimming pool while Marianne swims, reflecting the calm nature of the time in the plot when it first seems as though Marianne has finally settled into a routine she is happy with at uni. Colour symbolism is a crucial part of any on screen experience, and it doesn’t go unnoticed here in Normal People.
The overall story of course no different than that of the books and the TV series still portrayed all the darkness in the plot in a very bares all nature. In fact, the way in which directors Abrahamson and Macdonald left the cut of the series reminded me of the sort of independently filmed short films young directors might create. Without all the editing awkwardness of experimental shots, the stark, clean, dry atmosphere created truly reflected the youth, vulnerability, and intensity that is Marianne and Connell’s lives. This doesn’t go unnoticed by other critics who praise this appeal highlighting the ‘literary treatment of a story that is at its core a teen melodrama, even wish fulfilment’[6]. The use of handheld cameras and dusky lighting evoke this wistful sense of naturalistic intimacy which complemented the character’s and their story to perfection while the ‘intimate camera shots capture the connection between the characters’[7] fantastically.
All this was yet to answer my question though, why do people love this ultimately depressing story? Even if they hadn’t read the book, the story line and the issues it deals with are still abundantly clear. A familiar line of contention for this in many reviews was apparently the idea that this story was a way for people to reminisce about their own pasts, creating a longing to return to their youths while at the same time reminding themselves of the awkward coming of age period. This didn’t make me feel any better about it though. Obviously I’m not old enough yet to appreciate being reminded of the sort of scenarios Connell and Marianne go through in a way that evokes a classic ‘back in the good ol’ days’ memento, but I don’t think I ever want to be either. Perhaps I’ll never quite understand it, nor will I ever understand the apparent draw of the book to the hundreds of thousands of readers, with some particularly annoyed that they will never be able to read the book for the first time again. I had put off reading it during the ridiculous excitement over it, and now I wished I had never read it at all. I won’t be reading it again, ever, but, I have to admit, I could sit and watch the ‘beautiful, pitch-perfect adaptation’ again just to appreciate how incredibly accurate and raw it is, so perhaps, just this once, I’m being a tad harsh. Me? Never!
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/normal-people-review-bbc-sally-rooney-daisy-edgar-jones-paul-mescal-cast-stream-watch-a9476261.html [2] Sally Rooney, (2018), Normal People [3] https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2020-04-22/normal-people-review/ [4] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/apr/26/normal-people-review-sally-rooney-bbc-hulu [5] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/normal-people-review-1292180 [6] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/normal-people-review-1292180 [7] https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1273629/Normal-People-review-series-BBC-Three-Hulu-Sally-Rooney-Paul-Mescal-Daisy-Edgar-Jones