hey everyone i'm elliot welcome back to another episode of reading a book in every
sub-genre of every genre if this is your first time here the idea is pretty simple
i want to read more books and i'm using genres to direct myself towards books that
i otherwise might not pick up so i've been reading a lot of fantasy and sci-fi books
for a while now and i need a break i honestly do i feel myself going a little crazy so
today i'm going to break it up a bit and the genre we're going to be exploring this time around
is psychological fiction and the book representing that is normal people by
sally rooney normal people you might have heard of it it was a very popular book like three years ago
i think i know why people love stories about normal people that's so obvious so obvious
before we get started on the contents of the book let's talk about psychological fiction
what is it well psychological fiction explores the mental state of a character's inner person
usually done through stream of consciousness or flashbacks a good psychological fiction proves
to me that you don't need a complex plot to tell an engaging story because the complexity
of the human mind is inherently interesting just think about like having coffee with your friend
and just talking about the mundane stuff it's still engaging so this book is called normal
people which is pretty vague right but what it's actually about is about friends with benefits
you know one of those titleist relationships that young people get into but the theme of the story
is about making decisions you know what type of person do we want to be what school do we want
to go to what relationships do we want to have and it asks this question can a person live two
separate lives you know without compromising or having the two worlds collide so while this
book goes internal it also goes external and talks about how the people around us influence
our decisions but whatever decision you make you always have to live with yourself you can't escape
it even if you choose to move to another city or whatever it reminds me of this quote wherever you
go there you are and i find it kind of relatable the unresolved drama aspect of it because i've
had relationships before where i was very close to these group of people or this person and uh then
we're not anymore rather i graduated i quit the school or i quit the job or something and i don't
see them anymore we don't get to hang out and if we did have anything unresolved it's just gonna
that's just the way it is to be continued right like if i knew these characters in real life i
would roll my eyes at them because for some reason they really care about each other's sex lives like
even the secondary characters they're kind of nosy about it even though i don't really like these
characters i appreciate how they're constructed marianne for example and how she lives outside of
the popularity ladder and she could you know she's not really influenced by what other people think
and she could view everything objectively kano on the other hand i think that's how you say his name
connell he clearly has something to lose and he has this commitment issues so
he's bracing for every decision that he has to make and in doing so he becomes
destructive to himself and other people around him i also like the idea of being rich adjacent
and how that could influence your decisions because being closely related to a rich person
has a lot of perks right they can find you a job or you'll be invited to surprise parties what you
have to do is just nourish this relationship not screw it up too bad and that's what connells is
going through right now as well one of my favorite parts in the book so far is a conversation between
the characters where they're talking about how men control the whole societal system and this
this is the best that they come up with they're not even having any fun if it was a matriarchy
they would be having more fun this book is very well paced the flashbacks that are interlaced is
done very skillfully and sally rooney uses a very like effective writing technique which is this
whatever the characters take for granted take it away from them and that just creates so
much tension for the rest of the story anyways like i mentioned i'm halfway through this book
i'm gonna keep reading it and i'll be back very shortly to give you my final thoughts
and that's happening right now all right we are back and i just finished reading
normal people by sally rooney and here are my thoughts i think this book is really good
empathy practice i'm not good at empathy i'm not empathetic so what this book does is it helps me
get inside of the brains of people who i think in normal life i would find rather annoying so while
reading the second half i felt like we needed this story from jamie and helen's perspective because
at times i found myself empathizing with them a little bit more maybe because i too am not used to
dealing with moody and potentially depressed people so when conor was defending marianne
against helen's criticism i kind of related to that because it was like he was defending himself
because they're so interconnected and i've been in situations where i had to defend a friend just
because i was with that friend doing that thing and it was like to not defend him would be to
not defend myself but in the end marianne's family sucks so i think this book is a good reminder of
that that whenever you meet someone you dislike it's most certainly their family's fault that
made them this way so i try not to blame them and i try to blame their family it's like i'm
sorry you had an unfortunate family situation that made you into this this person that you are
now i'm very sorry so empathy that's how it works that's how it works which let me think about this
when someone mistreats us family partners bosses do we ever deserve it is it ever okay for someone
to mistreat us and if so where do we draw that line look i'm not connell i'm not marianne
i'm not depressed but it's a good reminder that there's people out there who are living troubled
lives that we wouldn't even be able to understand even if they told us and reading a book like this
is the closest thing that we can get this book has so many just these little nuggets of truth
that like anybody who's going through their 20s can totally understand such as like reflecting on
picking friends in high school and how that is all just done through circumstances and rarely
do you and your high school friends have this deep seated similarity like for example conal
didn't have any political views similarities with any of his high school friends another one is like
picking sides during a breakup and how you should always keep your circle of friends kind of tight
when you're in a relationship so you don't have your girlfriend or boyfriend stealing your friends
from you there's also this part in the story where connell's traveling and he's corresponding
with marianne through email and that's just something every relationship can relate to because
there's always this phase where email just seems to be the most efficient way to communicate with
someone you love you just have so much to say that a simple text message won't do it's just
like okay i don't have time to communicate with you all day but let me just sum up my entire
week day month and an email so the second half of this book does get a lot darker um one part that
stuck out with me is when they talk about writing on the facebook page of a dead person like writing
i miss you or something like that and as a way to show grief but how meaningless that is because
all life is pointless so it's just like meaningless thing for this pointless thing
yeah that hit me a little so another character i want to talk about is lucas who we are made
to feel as though his artistic expression is wrong marianne disenchanted by him says that everything
you do is an effect which makes it feel as though what he's creating is artificial and
pointless thus making it so much worse when he hurts marianne to make his meaningless art
finally i want to leave with this and that's the contrast of the two characters when they
received the scholarship for marianne it was just a confirmation of what she already knew
but for connell the money was life-changing he could go travel he could live rent free and that
leads to the idea that the privilege of education and how the rich will always have this advantage
but should it be something they feel guilty for i love the bittersweet ending and as a cynic i can
kind of imagine how their lives are gonna go so i appreciated that it was left open-ended for me for
me to fill it in with my own darkness um normal people this is a really good book i know a lot
has been said about it it's like a tv miniseries anyways finally i get a chance to talk about it so
thank you for listening um once again i am reading a book in every sub-genre of every genre
if you have one you want to recommend please do and if you just want to come along on the journey
don't forget to subscribe alright i'll talk to you later bye