Irish Independent editor Fionnán Sheahan described the book as a polemic, noting that Rooney has described herself as a Marxist and that the book features discussions about The Communist Manifesto document and Doris Lessing's feminist novel The Golden Notebook. In the same year, it was ranked 25th on The Guardian 's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. In 2019, the novel was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. It was voted as the 2018 Waterstones' Book of the Year and won 'Best Novel' at the 2018 Costa Book Awards. It was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Normal People received wide critical acclaim. The two weave in and out of each other's lives during their university years, developing an intense bond that exposes their traumas and insecurities. Well-off Marianne blossoms at university, becoming pretty and popular, while Connell struggles for the first time in his life to fit in properly with his peers. Connell keeps the affair a secret from school friends out of shame, but ends up attending Trinity with Marianne after the summer and reconciling. Connell is a popular, handsome, and highly intelligent secondary school student who begins a relationship with the unpopular, intimidating, equally intelligent Marianne, whose mother employs Connell's mother as a cleaner. It is set during the post-2008 Irish economic downturn, from 2011 through 2015.

The novel follows the complex friendship and relationship between two teenagers, Connell and Marianne, who both attend the same secondary school in County Sligo, Ireland, and, later, Trinity College Dublin (TCD). A number of publications ranked it one of the best books of the 2010s. A critically acclaimed and Emmy nominated television adaptation of the same name aired from April 2020 on BBC Three and Hulu. The book became a best-seller in the US, selling almost 64,000 copies in hardcover in its first four months of release. It was first published by Faber & Faber on 30 August 2018. Normal People is Rooney's second novel, published after Conversations with Friends (2017). Normal People is a 2018 novel by the Irish author Sally Rooney.

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