"Normal People"

Sometimes a book stays with you long after you've turned over the final page and put it down (or in this case, turned off my tablet). You know that through the miracle we call reading, something alive has burrowed deep inside you, or to change the metaphor, has laid down layers of memory and experience that you will go on quarrying in time to come.

I've just finished reading Normal People by the Irish novelist Sally Rooney. It was only published this month and I've read it already - it's oddly satisfying to be ahead of the curve for once. She is still only in her twenties, yet this novel which has received rave reviews flew straight on to this year's Man Booker longlist. It's a virtuoso performance by any standards: compelling, fluent and wise beyond the novelist's tender years. You feel she knows about human life, knows about the ups and downs of human relationships, knows about the complexity of every human heart.

Rooney's story concerns two school friends, Connell and Marianne. They are both bright. She is privileged, wealthy and mercurial, unsure of herself and un-streetwise. He is from a more modest background, is principled, good looking and confident. From school days in rural Ireland, the tale brings us to Trinity College Dublin and their lives as students. Their relationship eddies round love and sex (there is a lot of sex), then out again back to a "mere" friendship, yet suffused with post-romantic longings that are always pulling them back into each others' gravitational fields. You know that like satellites locked into a resonant orbit, they will always be facing each other. It's impossible that either of them will ever look away more than momentarily. The puzzlement and pain of never-quite-realised longings are familiar to anyone who's ever been in love. Perhaps I mean anyone who's ever lived.

That's it, really. There's not much plot. There doesn't need to be, for the drama lies in the emotional lives of the two principal protagonists. I mentioned the central part sex plays in the story. The other big theme is power. Other people are drawn into the circle of their relationship - their families, and friends, and they inevitably distort and at times upset the delicate emotional equilibrium that Marianne and Connell are unknowingly establishing for themselves. I use the continuous present tense there because the theme of the novel is that attaining the right balance of power between them is a work in progress. It always will be.

On a Kindle or tablet, you never quite know how much of the book you've read and how many pages are left (unless you obsess about the percentages, and the hours and minutes at the foot of the page). Last night I'd reached the end of what I'd assumed was a chapter. It turned out to be the end of the novel. I was stopped in my tracks and had to read the final page again. Here it is. I don't need to warn about spoilers because in this book, there is no risk of there being any.

She closes her eyes. He probably won't come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift, and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They've done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.

You should go, she says. I'll always be here. You know that.

All writers pay close attention to how their books begin and end. This last page reads as if it has been effortlessly written. But I know enough about writing to suspect that this kind of prose, this carefully imagined stream-of-consciousness, is hard-won. The unpretentious ordinariness of it is precisely what you marvel at. In the hands of someone who knows how to write, ordinary words are transmuted into the verbal equivalent of gold. It's as if each of them is a little sacrament of meaning that, taken together, accumulate into something precious and unforgettable. There are a few writers who can achieve this degree of purity, but not many. Chekhov comes to mind. In some ways, Rooney's writing reminded me of John Williams' beautiful novel Stoner that only achieved fame when it was reissued nearly forty years after it was written. For the sheer elegance of its writing, its capacity to do extraordinary things with ordinary language, it's a tour de force. But both books are so modest, so unassuming that you wouldn't suspect you were holding a masterpiece in your hands until you thought about it.

But the genius of Rooney's final page is that this is precisely that it isn't a last word. I spoke about a work in progress. You could say that this novel has been left unfinished, because that is the only way in which in this case, the novelist could lay down her pen and leave us with a sense of satisfaction that the narrative has to go on. It would be an easy trope to comment that it has to go on in us who read it (though all great literature has something of that imperative about it). It would be too calculated to say, in effect: "Right, dear reader. I've done my bit. Now over to you". But insofar as we genuinely care about the characters, always a good test, the novel does require us to do some "work" of our own if we are to come away enriched and rewarded. Perhaps what makes this novel one of those we won't forget is that it poses so many universal questions about life, love and longing. That final sentence, I'll always be here. You know that.  That's precisely not a full stop at the end. A whole lifetime of change and chance lies hidden in that tiny period. You close the book. But you go on pondering. And you find that what you're thinking about is not only them but us, you and me and the people we have loved.

The title Normal People is one way entirely accurate, for Marianne and Connell are ordinary people like us. In another way it's deceptive, no doubt in an intended way. For what the novel achieves is to open our eyes to how extraordinary even the "normal" becomes when it is lit up for us. I think this would be one of my theological responses to the novel. Yes, there is a lot in it about the nature of relationship, what happens between human beings, what is implicitly covenanted and endures, what is fleeting and belongs to the moment. The book cleverly plays with these two characteristics and through a skilful counterpoint between them, keeps you guessing (even beyond the final page?) what the true nature of this relationship will turn out to be.

One way of describing theology is as a lens to help us read human life in the light of faith in God. We learn to make connections, look beneath the surface, ask the right questions, live in a more reflective way. Normal People is one of those books whose very theological innocence unwittingly makes it profoundly theological, if that means being stimulated to ask fundamental questions of meaning, purpose and destiny. It's precisely in the alleged uneventfulness of ordinary life that dramas of ultimate significance get played out in every human heart. Which is why I unhesitatingly put this novel at the top of my "best books" of 2018 - so far....