#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD • WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE'S ENCORE AWARD • THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS' BOOK OF THE YEAR (OVERALL) • THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS' FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR •
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE'S ENCORE AWARD • SHORTLISTED FOR THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR • LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD • A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY • A PENGUIN BOOK CLUB PICK
“Rooney writes like she’s shearing through blue silk with a newly sharpened pair of scissors. . . . Again and again, she hits the perfect phrase and then the ideal restraint. She writes about tricky commonplace things (text messages, sex) with a familiarity no one else has. She is a puer senex, and I hope the spell holds.” —The Paris Review
“Like other zeitgeist novels . . . Normal People has trapped a moment—in this case, our new sense of collective precariousness—whether individual, economic or political. . . . It is the first novel I have read that has convincingly captured what it is to be young today: often overeducated, neurotic, slightly too self-aware.” —The Guardian
“A trailblazing novel about modern life and love that will electrify any reader.” —Costal Novel Award jury citation
“Sally Rooney's Normal People is the deeply felt story of a foundational relationship at the margin of friendship and true love, of shame and devotion. This inventive and profound novel proves what great fiction can do—it can open a world at the seams.” —Emma Straub, author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers
“I couldn’t put Normal People down—I didn’t think I could love it as much as Conversations with Friends, but I did. Sally Rooney is a treasure. I can’t wait to see what she does next.” —Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and The Possessed
“This is one the best novels I have read in years. Sally Rooney understands the complexities of love, its radical intimacy, and how power is always shifting between people, and she tells her story in a way that feels new and old at the same time. It is intelligent, spare and mesmerizing, and it sent me back to an earlier point in my life in such a vivid and real way, reanimating for me with that period of time (first love), which I had thought was lost to me forever, but which felt born again in the form of this book.” —Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?
“Sally Rooney is a master of the literary page-turner. In Normal People, she has once again crafted a complicated love story that's impossible to put down. It's also full of wise observations about class, gender roles and how the past shapes the present. Rooney's novels are populated with characters and situations that feel at once totally familiar and like something we've never seen in fiction before.” —J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Saints for All Occasions
“I went into a tunnel with this book and didn’t want to come out. Absolutely engrossing and surprisingly heart-breaking with more depth, subtlety, and insight than any one novel deserves. Young love is a subject of much scorn, but Rooney understands the cataclysmic effects our youth has on the people we become. She has restored not only love’s dignity, but also its significance.” —Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter
“It is time to take a sharp inhale, people. After the success of Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney has produced a second novel, Normal People which will be just as successful as it deserves to be: it is superb . . . [T]he truth is that this novel is about human connection and I found it difficult to disconnect. It is a long time since I cared so much about two characters on a page.” —Anne Enright, The Irish Times
“Rooney homes in on what she’s best at—describing people, with all their conceits and self-delusions, weaknesses and virtues. She does this with unsparing acuity and extraordinary sensitivity . . . There’s arch humor in her insights too.” —The Times (UK)
“Beautifully observed and profoundly moving, I could scale new heights of hyperbole trying to describe how good this book is, but really, you just need to read it.” —The Bookseller
Praise for Conversations with Friends:
“A writer of rare confidence, with a lucid, exacting style . . . [O]ne wonderful aspect of Rooney’s consistently wonderful novel is the fierce clarity with which she examines the self-delusion that so often festers alongside presumed self-knowledge . . . But Rooney’s natural power is as a psychological portraitist. She is acute and sophisticated about the workings of innocence; the protagonist of this novel about growing up has no idea just how much of it she has left to do.” —The New Yorker
“Rooney has the gift of imbuing everyday life with a sense of high stakes…a novel of delicious frictions.” —New York Magazine
“I love debuts where you just can’t believe that it was a debut . . . Conversations with Friends paints a nuanced, page-turning portrait of a whip-smart university student in the throes of an affair with an older married man.” —Zadie Smith, ELLE
“The dialogue is superb, as are the insights about communicating in the age of electronic devices. Rooney has a magical ability to write scenes of such verisimilitude that even when little happens they’re suspenseful.” —Curtis Sittenfeld, The Week
“Sharp, funny, thought-provoking . . . a really great portrait of two young women as they’re figuring out how to be adults.” —Celeste Ng, Late Night with Seth Meyers Podcast
“This book. This book. I read it in one day. I hear I'm not alone.” —Sarah Jessica Parker
