NORMAL PEOPLE:
First chapter:

The novelist, Sally Rooney, decided to articolate her novel into different time-stamped chapters each divided into various months (from January 2011 to February 2015). Talking about the time, she wanted to start the novel with “January 2011” perhaps because she wanted to express and underline the idea of the beginning of relationship.

The first chapter of Sally Rooney’s novel “Normal People” aims firstly to create a general characterization of the main protagonist of the whole novel and introduces a general setting for the reader, secondly it aims to present secondary protagonists to involve the reader into the love story.
Sally Rooney uses the technique of telling and showing, for the presentation of the main protagonists: indeed the shift of the point of view seems to drag the reader into the character’s mind and consequently makes the reader involved into the story.

The two main characters of the novel are on one side Marianne, a rich girl, and on the other Connell, a poor boy. The novelist, at the beginning introduces another figure Lorraine, without explaining her connection with the other characters: even if Rooney introduced her figure explaining her role and tasks into Marianne’s house.
As for the whole narration, it’s express in the first part of the novel, Connell’s desire to send back the conversation that's starts between her mother and Marianne, and underlines through his body language: she introduces herself into Marianne and Connell conversation asking about school tests in the high school.
During the high school Marianne is the unpopular girl instead of Connell who was the popular one thanks to football squad, is this the reason why the relationship between the main protagonists is secret. Marianne instead of Connell is more autonomous because she’s less conditioned by the others’ thoughts indeed she doesn’t want to be accepted by her peers but she is not totally free because she accepted the secret relationship with Connell, (accepting all compromises)

Last but not least, in the first part the novelist, S. Rooney, doesn’t use any flashback (that she’ll write in the chapters below) because the goal of the first chapter is to introduce the figure of the protagonists of the novel, explaining them rules in and out of school including the setting of the whole story.