Normal People

I've finished watching 'Normal People'. I've "binge-watched" it, as the young people say. I'm not generally inclined to do that, but with this I very much did.

I very much loved it.

I have a few thoughts ... [SLIGHT, TINY, SPOILERS, I suppose]

I will try to write about the TV series in isolation, but inevitably that will dovetail with the source book. I read the book, by Sally Rooney, about 18 months ago. I also loved that a great deal. I had already read 'Conversations with Friends', her other novel.

I have read almost 100 novels in the last couple of years, and 'Normal People' remains in my favourite handful. I can remember few others I was so regularly moved by. Being "moved" isn't the be all and end all, of course. I recently read another work of popular-yet-acclaimed young person's fiction, and though moved very much by a couple of scenes, I did not feel it was a great book by any means.

Whereas I do think 'Normal People' is a great book. It manages to be insightful, funny, compelling, heartbreaking, shocking and above all, real. So the fact that Rooney was in her mid-20s when she wrote it and its protagonists are even younger seems pretty irrelevant to whether it deserves to be considered great or not. I mean, I understand the carping. I couldn't deal with the Arctic Monkeys when they first came along and I was pushing 30. Who did Alex Turner think he was, being 18 and writing songs like that?

I'm not too interested in the idea of "high art" in any medium, but I do try to watch/read/listen to things which are deemed "good" - some of my favourite films are coming-of-age films, but usually they are acclaimed (horrible word, I know) coming-of-age films.

So 'Normal People' was not a great departure, as a book, for me. I had read 'One Day'. I had even (by mistake), read 'The Fault in Our Stars' and loved it.

Talking of 'One Day', the TV series of 'Normal People' has really shown up everything they should have done with that. They got greedy and made an odd film with a horribly miscast Hollywood star. They should have (and I think it was pretty clear at the time, based on the structure of the book, and the specific background of the female protagonist), made a 12-part TV drama casting relatives unknowns in the leads. Instead they took away most of what made the book unique, hired Anne Hathaway and convinced her that all English accents were basically the same if she said "oop" occasionally.

'Normal People' gets everything right, and I think that's what its detractors have to know about it to understand how good it is. That applies to both the book and the TV series. It's the details. The TV series looks like the book you imagine, it really does. [it's funny that one of the biggest deviations was changing Connell's sport of choice, for both playing and watching, from football to Gaelic football, as if someone whispered "we just need to make it a tiny bit more authentically Irish"].

And the book presents the life of certain kinds of young people as they really are. I'm 41 now, so you know, a bit older than ideal, but my cultural sphere is probably just about young enough, and furthermore I can remember the horrors of youth sufficiently well, to know that the extent to which Rooney is not guessing about any of this is what makes the book so poignant and overwhelming.

For example, there's a bit in the book 'Conversations with Friends' where an unnamed Joanna Newsom song on a compilation tape is mentioned and I, like a sap, felt I knew exactly which Joanna Newsom song it would be and why it would have been put on the compilation. In the TV series, in, I think, Episode 3, when Connell and Marianne go to the abandoned house, you hear a short section of 'Horn' by Nick Drake, and that was the similar "Yes!" moment for me. This.   They know what they're doing. One or two of the end-credit choices were a tiny bit more on-the-nose, albeit still lovely, but the show had earned it by then.
[Re-reading this, I realise that it looks pretty odd to say the inclusion of a song from 1972 on the soundtrack shows that the creators really capture the experience of young people. But it showed, for me, the attention to detail, to something that was beautiful rather than obvious].

The leads are incredible. I might be wrong and misjudging them both, but I suspect that for Daisy Edgar Jones it's a star-making performance, while for Paul Mescal, it's the role of a lifetime. He's thoroughly perfect, in look, in manner, in everything, for the part, and there may not be that many more roles to come he's so perfect for. We'll see. That sounds like I'm doubting his acting ability. Not one little bit. I think it's an incredible piece of acting, but I just think there are not that many characters like Connell.

Connell is, for me (and this definitely is subjective and personal) the book and the TV show's indelible character, and proof of Rooney's great gift. I've been thinking about this a lot these last few days, trying to pin down what is so striking about him.

There is, in a way, nothing that surprising about him. The sensitive jock has been done before (even in films as broad as 'American Pie'). The working-class genius has been done ('Good Will Hunting' being a good, but very different, example). Connell is an almost entirely good person, almost entirely kind, and thoughtful, and sensitive, and strong, and noble, and athletic, and brilliant, and loving, and capable. How come, bearing all that in mind, he seems so nuanced, so fresh, so heartbreaking?

When Connell's depression comes in the book (and I suspect in the TV series for those that haven't read the book) it is initially a surprise, but very quickly you realise it shouldn't be. Rooney, and the show-runners, and Mescal too, have put the work in. Of course, he doesn't fit the type, but, conversely, he exactly does.

It reminded me of a time when I was at university and there was a friend of a friend of mine, a guy who I knew to nod at in the street, who I'd play football against, who was working-class English (in a Uni of a lot of Scots, a lot, lot of posh English, a fair few Irish, a lot of Americans) and, I was told, exceptionally academically gifted, who just seemed like a generally cool, nice guy, and I was told, confidentially, he suffered from regular crippling episodes of depression, and I remember thinking, I'm afraid, "really? he doesn't seem the type", even though at the time I was pretty certain I was enduring a (thankfully, very low level and, even more thankfully, transient) period of depression myself, whilst doing well in my studies, playing football every week, giving very few outward signs.

Connell's hang-ups, and the crushing mistakes he makes, can seem so trivial for an older reader - he cares about looking right, cares about his friends, cares about status, about doing the right thing by everybody, about not causing a scene and showing himself up, cares about fitting in. He, while at school, messes up his great teenage love and causes damage to an already damaged person, for what he realises pretty soon is no good reason, and then neither of them can communicate well enough to sort it out, even though it should be easy, if only, of only ... and then you remember, those concerns do rule your life when you're young, and even though you may get over them, the repercussions live on. When you're young, brief moments of social awkwardness do change the course of your life.

People like Connell are rare, but they do exist. And the fact is, even at the end of the book/series, when he's "made it", he hasn't made it at all. He's not the son of a famous connected person, he won't get his own book deal/newspaper column just like that. The chances are he'll go to New York, fail to make much impression, lose confidence, come back to Ireland, maybe go to England, find an OK job he's good at but doesn't love, mess things up with Marianne over again, probably make an unsatisfactory marriage out of a sense of responsibility, wish he'd stuck to doing law after all so he can support them properly etc etc.

The book is about more than love. It's about class and status, about shifting impressions, it's about politics, free speech, opportunities. The TV series gets that across incredibly well in a far more limiting format than the book. The supporting characters are really well drawn, particularly the horrible Jamie, initially so innocuous. You know exactly the kind of new media he'd be extremely successful and outspoken in right now.

Connell and Marianne are both exceptional people, hardly normal at all, which could very easily be pretty tiresome for the reader and the viewer - Look at these amazing people accomplish great things while shutting everyone else out of their world. But it's their exceptionalness that allows Rooney and the TV directors to, realistically and honestly, take them through several different layers, frames of mind, positions in the pecking order, shocking happenings and mundane events.

It is a sign of how much I invested in the book that I felt, at the end, like the TV series had deviated, and was a sadder ending than I remembered, but in fact, it's almost exactly the same, you just very much want these two people to be happy.

Perhaps there is a tiny bit more of something happily and successfully wrapped up with the book, while the TV, naturally enough, gives more of a hint that there is more to come ... good idea or not ... certainly that would suggest the possibility of  following the lead of that other great modern romance, the "Before" trilogy, but I would very much wish, if there is to be more (I'd currently hope not), it follows another Rooney novel, rather than just a standalone TV series. We'll see. Money talks.