Рецензия на книгу

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  TeddyBasmanov6 ноября 2022 г.

  "The Great Millenial Novel"?

  (this is literally an essay I wrote for my Uni English class two years ago - it's technically not a proper review but a comparison of two other reviews, but my opinion on the book is there, so whatever)
  “Normal People” by Sally Rooney sucks. Okay, how’s that for a catcher? Alright, maybe it doesn’t, who knows, nobody can give you an objective opinion about a book but at least I don’t pretend that I see some deeper meaning where I don’t. Neither do both reviewers from “Guardian” and “The Sydney Morning Herald”, even though they have different opinions.
  Jessa Crispin from “Guardian” literally takes words from my mouth. This book contains the most generic love story which pretends to be “the great Millennial novel”. The author tries to throw anything she can into the mix from her conception of BDSM (Gods, please, if you’re there, “Fifty Shades” were enough, we don’t need any more unhealthy “BDSM” representations in mainstream bestseller books) to her political position. Oh, about her political position – it’s a pretty big part of the narrative (and, apparently, Ms Rooney’s life, but that’s not the point) and it does seem a little forced. Just a tad bit. I (and Jessa Crispin) think that you either write a political essay or a novel in which you SHOW through characters and their actions that your political position is right, you don’t write a novel in which characters would say your political position out loud with their motivation altogether. This book should be a literature teachers’ favourite because it literally analyzes itself. (coughwokenismcough)
  Michael Koziol (why do I feel that his surname sounds like something) from the main Australian newspaper writes that the main thing that sold the book is sex. One of the main topics of his review is the generation gap – he thinks that most people who like the book are millennials or teenagers and people who don’t are the part of the older generation. However, some older readers still liked it because they felt nostalgia for their college days. He even mentions “Guardian” columnist and writes that her frustration was just from lack of empathy to the characters (which millennials were supposed to feel). He also writes (quoting some other review) that the flaws that make characters frustrating can make them attractive – their problems are at the same time close to the reader and very distant from them, because “It is pleasant to imagine a world in which everyone responds to you as if you're brilliant, even if you're behaving in a way that real people would find annoying”. He gives a few more quotes from other reviews concluding with the one which says that “Normal People” is a good example of escapist literature which makes you feel that you are reading some kind of modern classics.
  I’ve already started expressing my opinion while writing about Jessa Crispin’s review (and in the very beginning if you didn’t notice) but let’s be honest – my father asked me to read it because, quote-unquote: “Almost everybody on the internet says it’s excellent, but you are the target audience and should understand it better so it would be nice if you read it and tell me what you think about it”, - and I don’t feel like I’m the target audience at all, because I certainly didn’t feel the needed empathy. The only problem with those characters is that they can’t properly talk to each other – use the words through their mouths. I also wasn’t shocked, intrigued or felt any other particularly strong feeling about the sex scenes, especially counting that they were pretty brief and pretty boring. In general, I was disappointed because I was told that it’s some kind of revolutionary book and that the series based on it can easily compete with my favourite “Sex Education”. What do you think? Instead of all that I get a frustrating love story in which everybody is unbearably straight, excruciatingly white and, truth be told, pretty much painfully middle class, nethermind whatever our self-identifying Marxist author tries to tell us. Don’t even get me started on above-mentioned BDSM.
  In conclusion, I’d like to say that despite all my infuriated blabbering (I tried not to swear) I don’t say that you can’t enjoy it – may you can, a lot of people do after all and I was never one for basic romance stories. Maybe, I even wrote it all just to brag that my opinion corresponds with the one of a “Guardian” columnist.

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