At school Connell and Marianne pretended not to know each other. He is the popular and well-adjusted star of the soccer team. While she is the lonely, proud and intensely private person. However when Connell comes to pick up his mother from her housekeeping job at Marianne's parents house, they develop a strange and everlasting connection between themselves and it is one which they are determined to conceal from the world.
A year later, they are both studying at Trinity College in Dublin and Marianne has found a new social circle which has transformed her into a social butterfly, while Connell is hanging out on the sidelines and is shy and uncertain about himself. Throughout their years during college, Marianna and Connell circle each other, straying towards other people and then their magnetic connection draws them back together. Marianne then veers herself into a self-destructive being and he begins to finally search for the meaningless elsewhere. Each of them must comfort how far they are willing to tread and fight for each other to save them.
I found that this was a brilliant psychological story which everyone can relate to as everyone has been where Marianne and Connell have been at some time in their lives. The writing style of the novel is interesting and can sometimes feel as if all of the sentences are melding together as there is very limited punctuation but it is very brilliantly done. Their relationship is the classic Romeo and Juliet story which they conceal as there is always someone who does not approve of it. I myself have had a relationship which was more secret than public and it was during a very troubling time in my life and i was much like Marianne at school and then in college. I would recommend this novel to students of psychology and people who think that they are the only person in the world who feels like this.
To read this for yourself, following this link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Normal-People
