Normal People
I saw the TV show first, then fled to the book to hold on to a scrap of those feelings. It left me confused. There isn’t much in these stories I recognise from my own life at this age. Yet the story leaves me with a strong sense of nostalgia.
Late in the book, a character says:
“It’s funny the decisions you make because you like someone, he says, and then your whole life is different. I think we’re at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions.”
I have been at an age when my life changed a lot from small decisions. The life I live now is the product of choices that seemed both enormous and inconsequential at the time. The most lasting are tied to the people I shared that time with. They feel as much like impressions we left on each other as choices I made myself.
It’s a set in a period where I also came of age, but the familiarity goes beyond that time. I’m left with a strong, homely, troubling nostalgia I find stuck with since finishing it. And a hunger to peek back into their lives, in hopes I can recall more of my own.
That aside, it’s one of the best things I’ve read this year.
After "Normal People" I read: How to Survive a Crisis: Lessons in Resilience and avoiding disaster
Before "Normal People" I read: The Future of Truth