Normal People

by Sally Rooney

Always drawn to my Irish writers, Sally Rooney is another good one. Normal People is both sunny and biting, like catching soft light through a cracked window. Her prose hums with millennial signposts — Tumblr-era introspection, class anxiety, and accidental ghosting. The push-pull between Marianne and Connell manages to draw something timeless from all the noise: raw, aching humanity. Sometimes the emotional intensity is a little much, and the pacing stutters in parts, looping through similar beats in ways that can distract more than deepen. Still, there’s something magnetic in its unvarnished vulnerability, as if it dared me to feel too much.