Whispered Passions

Some stories tear you up inside, leaving you heaving and sobbing. Others creep in quietly, winding their way into your heart and leaving you exposed, thoughtful, and maybe a little dumbfounded. Sally Rooney’s Normal People is firmly the latter.

Set in a small village in Ireland and later in Dublin and continental Europe, the novel follows Marianne and Connell’s treacherous, on-again, off-again romantic entanglement. They meet in secondary school, teenagers from opposite ends of the economic spectrum—Marianne’s family is wealthy and emotionally distant, while Connell is being raised by a hardworking single mother. Yet despite their class differences, their personalities orbit a similar center.

They’re passionate about politics, literature, society, and the environment. When they’re together, conversations flow easily and Connell feels most like himself. But apart, they’re ill at ease in their surroundings—like square pegs trying to squeeze into round holes. Marianne is isolated and friendless in high school. Connell, though popular, feels no real connection to his peers.

At Trinity College in Dublin, the dynamic flips: Marianne finds her place in the social world of the elite, while Connell struggles with insecurity and a sense of not belonging. Still, when they’re together, none of that matters. The problem is—they never seem to stay together for long.

Their relationship is a slow-burning loop of miscommunication and missed opportunities. Connell feels awkward around Marianne’s wealth and status, and though he repeatedly pulls away, he can never fully let go. He inevitably hurts her in his silence. Marianne, in turn, doesn’t ask for what she wants, either because she doesn’t know how or doesn’t believe she deserves it.

Rooney’s prose is intimate and sharply observant. Her decision to omit quotation marks caught me off guard initially, but eventually, I understood the effect—everything blurs: thought, speech, and emotional undercurrent. It creates a feeling of closeness, almost like you’re inside the characters’ heads.

What struck me most, though, was the characters’ emotional restraint. There’s a coolness to their expression, a kind of default detachment. Coming from a Cuban American background, I found this fascinating. If this story were set in Miami, Connell and Marianne would throw pots and pans at each other on Calle Ocho. Their relationship would’ve looked less like quiet longing and more like an emotional hurricane, with all the neighborhood watching. El Show, as we’d say.

But that’s exactly what I love about reading widely. Even in fiction, there’s always a microcosm of truth, like how different cultures navigate love, intimacy, and pain.

Connell and Marianne may never quite find their “normal,” but Normal People lingers. It’s a tender, restrained, beautifully told story of two people who can’t quite stay apart, but never quite figure out how to stay together.