Normal People: an adaptation of beauty and pain in the noncommunicable

Just as a pre-warning, this is going to be one of those posts you are probably sick of after last weekend. It’s going to be a plea to watch Normal People as soon as you can, and hopefully an ode to its story that will make you want to do so.

I am relatively new to the world of Normal People. I was aware of Sally Rooney and the accolades she’s been (rightfully) showered with since the novel’s 2018 release, but I had never read her work. That was until World Book Day this year, on the train from Nottingham to Sheffield with nothing but my Kindle to keep me company. I downloaded the book out of the blue and devoured its contents. I soon realised that the book was becoming one of the best I had recently read: one of love, class and mental state in today’s climate. It is a tale heady with rich and incessant internal monologue from the two protagonists, Marianne and Connell. Their thoughts and feelings are communicated through Rooney and then to reader, rarely direct from character to character. When the news came of BBC Three’s adaptation I couldn’t wait, and my hopes were high- I love this story.

As a pair, Marianne and Connell are joined though circumstance, but their relationship is fractured by differences in class and social circle. They are somewhat only level in their intellect and attraction to each other. Behind (heavy) closed doors, the pair become close and feelings develop- but the politics, macro and micro, of their social situation create barriers. The pair go through immense feeling, whilst their lives move at the routine pace they are expected to. Rooney is dissecting the intoxicating percolation of the Irish class system into the minds of young people. The plot, dense with literary reference, echoes the mantra of 18^th Century dramatic realism: everything is happening to the person, whilst nothing is happening to the people.

The internalisation of such a delicately subtle plot is surely a challenge to translate from literature to television- it is rarely attempted. I wondered if there’d be constant voice-over playing, or something else obvious. There is no need though. The actors’ performances, the writing, the sound and the lighting of adaption weave into each other, creating a web that communicates Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell’s (Paul Mescal) emotional developments. It builds beautifully, without leaving the viewer in need of a climax- we feel fulfilled to have seen and shared what we have with the two lovers. It is enough.

Whilst Rooney’s novel is great, this is one of the rare occasions when a TV adaptation is on par with, or perhaps surpasses its literary inspiration. The story feels very real, and I know I’m not alone in being unable to find the word to describe what it is that makes it feel so. The depictions of school and university are raw and gutting without overdramatising; it is the experience of ‘normal people’ and our everyday lives. Lenny Abrahamson’s direction is masterful and touching.

The production is incredibly tranquil- it is stripped back and ambient so the emotional power of the story can be communicated without question. There's one point that demonstrates this perfectly... Connell and Marianne are on a train and an acoustic cover of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ is playing: it creates a moment where the viewer and characters are being moved to the same conclusion. We are brought to the realisation that it is only love keeping the couple apart, as they have finally overcome other barriers. It feels freeing. As they physically move through Italian towns, they are understood to be moving through their fear of being together and it feels as though the song is being heard by them as well as us. It proves Normal People to be a perfect transference of storytelling, from page onto screen.