I decided to start with Normal People, as I was already familiar with the characters and they story (because I had watched the show) and I have to say, for all their communication problems, and their self sabotage, and their refusal to be happy, I quite liked the book! I get why the Connell and Marianne act they way they do, but I love them so much, I really wish they would allow themselves to be happy with each other and face the challenges life throws at them together. I would like to imagine a life for them where they get married, have a beautiful family, and get the life they really deserve!
(Can you tell I want all romances to have happy endings, with sunshine and rainbows and love and hugs )
Rooney is clearly a great writer, and I found her prose to be beautiful. I got through the book fairly quickly after I got used to her style, and I will definitely be reading A Conversation with Friends next!
Cada hora que ha pasado desde entonces ha sido peor que la anterior. ¿O será que el dolor que siento ahora mismo es tan intenso que excede a mi capacidad de reconstruir el dolor que sentí en aquel momento? Es de suponer que el sufrimiento recordado nunca duele tanto como el sufrimiento presente, incluso si en realidad fue mucho peor; no podemos recordar cuán peor fue; porque recordar no tiene tanta fuerza como experimentar.
Pronunció el nombre de Liese sin especial afecto o desdén, como si fuera una chica más a la que había conocido, y durante meses después, tal vez para siempre, viví con el temor a que algún día pronunciara mi nombre del mismo modo.
…while the meaning of life remains the same always — just to live and be with other people?
(beautiful world, where are you? - sally rooney)
this book makes me very very very happy i just had to draw the characters and (im sorry a bit of spoiler) their future based on alice and eileen’s last emails.
(anyway if anyone love this book too, please gush about it with me hahaha)
my favorite parts of this book (SPOILER)
eileen’s theory about how in the midst of progress, human’s meaning of life remains the same, to live and be with other people.
felix telling alice about how he thought alice wont be happy when he sliced his hand and how nice it is to have someone who would care about something like that and if alice isnt feeling well he would want to know and he’ll look after her if she wanted him to.
alice crying while listening to felix singing
simon’s come to my apartement there’s ice cream and no roommates message to eileen
“im never good at being looked after” simon and “watch and learn” eileen
simon’s “but if you think there’s any chance that i could make you happy, i wish you would let me try”
felix’s “i dont think you like me more. i think we like each other the same. i know i dont show it in my actions all the time, but i can try to be better on that. and i will try. i love you, alright?”
‘Alice Kelleher: my boyfriend has never read my books’ headline
alice’s email about simon crying of happiness when she told him she’s pregnant and she’s keeping it.
everything else in the book lol
forgot to mention it’s an 18+ novel so kiddos dont read this book but anyway the SWEETEST smut ive read on a published book!!!
okay done, this book is just pure serotonin for me
C'è un passaggio di Conversations with Friends in cui Bobbi scrive a Frances che lei non parla mai dei suoi sentimenti e Frances si difende rispondendole che si è creata questa immagine di lei come di una persona con chissà quale vita sentimentale segreta quando la realtà invece è che non è una persona molto emotiva e Bobbi allora le dice che non crede che una persona possa non provare sentimenti perché sarebbe come dire di non essere vivi. Mi sento: attaccato.
the new batch of phoebe bridgers and paul mescal pap pics (ft. paul’s glorious pornstache) have officially killed me they are the most beautiful people ever
“Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was and become part of it. She had that feeling in school often, but it wasn’t accompanied by any specific images of what the real life might look or feel like. All she knew was that when it started, she wouldn’t need to imagine it anymore.”
“Her eyes fill up with tears again and she closes them. Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she’s aware of this now, while it’s happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.”
“Suddenly he can spend an afternoon in Vienna looking at Vermeer’s The Art of Painting, and it’s hot outside, and if he wants he can buy himself a cheap cold glass of beer afterwards. It’s like something he assumed was just a painted backdrop all his life has revealed itself to be real: foreign cities are real, and famous artworks, and underground railway systems, and remnants of the Berlin Wall. That’s money, the substance that makes the world real. There’s something so corrupt and sexy about it.”
“Last night he spent an hour and a half lying on the floor of his room, because he was too tired to complete the journey from his en suite back to his bed. There was the en suite, behind him, and there was the bed, in front of him, both well within view, but somehow it was impossible to move either forward or backward, only downward, onto the floor, until his body was arranged motionless on the carpet. Well, here I am on the floor, he thought. Is life so much worse here than it would be on the bed, or even in a totally different location? No, life is exactly the same. Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head. I might as well be lying here, breathing the vile dust of the carpet into my lungs, gradually feeling my right arm go numb under the weight of my body, because it’s essentially the same as every other possible experience.”
“She tries to be a good person. But deep down she knows she is a bad person, corrupted, wrong, and all her efforts to be right, to have the right opinions, to say the right things, these efforts only disguise what is buried inside her, the evil part of herself.”
“Dublin is extraordinarily beautiful to her in wet weather, the way gray stone darkens to black, and rain moves over the grass and whispers on slick roof tiles. Raincoats glistening in the undersea color of street lamps. Rain silver as loose change in the glare of traffic.”
Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Brittany, beginning a complex ménage à quatre. But when Frances and Nick get unexpectedly closer, the sharply witty and emotion-averse Frances is forced to honestly confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time. ★★★★★
