Normal People
(on forms of intimacies)
There are two kinds of intimacies.
One which exists within a couple. Nobody knows the truth of what a couple is doing or going through, except the two involved in the relationship. The moon slipping through their night, the freckles he notices in a moment suffused with sunlight, the old tshirt which she remembers he is wearing from the time they first met in a college hallway, the way she clutches the pillow when she comes, her face when she first says 'I love you', the sharp pain in her stomach when he says he loves another girl.
The second intimacy is what exists inside a person. The thoughts, the questions, the unsaid dialogue, the unspoken feeling, the dilemmas like raw scabs, the welts which appear deep inside from an unthinking decision, the darknesses stretching like uncharted territory which a heart alone despairs to resolve.
The truth of these intimacies is often nothing more than a cogent mess. There's ugliness, confusion, tenderness, stubbornness. And that infinitesimal element which makes a human lovable but also an infuriating piece of shit.
'Normal People' plunges into that beautiful mess. As Marianne and Connell delve into and out of their romantic lives, their story literally scrapes the hearts of the couple of its very vestiges of feeling to give the reader insights into the dynamics of the consent and deniability of love.
Our choices of love are often construed as fiery, being singular and then being exclusionist. But nothing is ever so simple. One thread could be like a permanent glow sheltered in its comfort and wonder; but there could be another which weaves a magic like an invisible wish, which gives strange momentums and beguiling serenities. It is being a rock and a mirror at the same time. And both true and both necessary.
As our lives find their ways and trajectories, we often win hearts and fail ourselves, but ever so often lose our hearts and win one too. And in that sublimity lies a deep pain, because parallel relationships are often truth's twins and not a heart's betrayal. Because nothing in life or love is simple.
This extraordinary book is heartbreaking, as its delineations of ardour and its passage are presented with all their aches, acuity, anxiety and agelessness.
The poster of the TV Series based on the novel, available on Lionsgate Play:
Poetry podcasts based on the theme of the difficulties of love: