I began reading Normal People shortly after I bought the novel, and I tore through it in the span of just a few hours. I had heard from several friends who read it that they loved it, and although I knew of the vast amount of praise that Rooney’s book was receiving, I was also aware of the mixed reviews – people either loved the book or they did not care for it – and that HBO had released a 12-part show of the novel in April of 2020 which I had not seen yet, but I have always preferred to read the book before watching the show or movie anyways. If you like what you read, be sure to pick up Gaitskill’s post-#MeToo novella This is Pleasure.This January, I picked up a copy of the novel Normal People by Sally Rooney whilst visiting my family back home in hopes to get out of my reading slump that was lasting longer than I care to admit. The original version is darker, but just as intriguing – as are many of the stories. Like Normal People, this book is full of frank depictions of sex and off-kilter balances of power, and it also contains the story that inspired the strange but charming BDSM romcom Secretary, starring Maggie Gyllenhall.

The uncomfortable relationship between Marianne’s low self-esteem and her masochistic streak has been criticised by some in the BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Submission, and Masochism) community, but is one of the themes explored in the medley of short stories in Bad Behavior, the collection that made Mary Gaitskill’s name. Though he declines, elsewhere he reflects on how “he has never been able to reconcile himself to the idea of losing his hold over her”. Marianne’s willingness to abase herself for love sees her repeatedly seek out violent or degrading sexual relationships – and later, in a climactic scene, to ask Connell if he would hit her. There’s more to it than that – Madeleine takes a detour into Derrida and Barthes her hapless admirer Mitchell wrestles with theology her mercurial boyfriend Leonard is diagnosed with bipolar disorder – but, in essence, this metafictional love triangle is a book about books that has much that will appeal those who like Normal People.

(The eagle-eyed will notice Rooney uses a quote from George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda as an epigraph.) The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jeffrey Eugenides ( The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex) also took inspiration from the English literary canon in his third book, a campus novel set Brown University in Rhode Island, in which the English major Madeleine Hanna havers between two suitors, while writing her thesis on Victorian romances. Rooney, who has a masters degree in English literature, told The New Yorker in 2018 that her books are “basically 19th-century novels dressed up in contemporary clothing” – books that Connell spends much of his time reading as an English student at Trinity College, Dublin. Foreign Policy & International Relations.

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