Normal people – Sally Rooney

Considerations about: structure and title

To start with a brief introduction, novel "Normal People" by Sally Rooney tells about a love story between two teenagers and how it develops throught the years, even if this is only the surface, since the book hides an enormous phylosophical and psychological background about human beings' nature.

What about the title?

It's not easy to make hypothesis about the title. "Normal people" could mean a lot of things, but considering the genre and the topic of the book one can think the title could refer to someone who wants to be normal, or to someone who feel normal, or even to someone who shows himslef as "normal" in the society, but maybe hte truth is that only the ones who have the courage and the strenght to be themsleves are normal. Considering such an hypothesis could mean that what we call normality is not what we are used to see in our society, but what we're not used to, since being normal requires being judged nowadays.

For what concerns the structure, the book is organized into chapters, only titled with dates. The chapters do not follow a chronological order. It could turn out to be difficult to understand the sequence of the events, since there are many flashbacks and many moments, even in the middle of the narration, where passed events are inserted. For the same motivation, it could also be difficult to find a plot. To tell the truth, in my opinion, there isn't a real plot. Indeed, the events are always based on the two protagonists who meet each others after a long time to separate again a few moments later.