Sally Rooney’s Normal People follows the intersecting story of Marianne and Connell as they navigate the changing landscape of their relationship into adulthood. Marianne is the young, affluent, intellectual wallflower; Connell is the boy everyone likes, shadowed by his family’s reputation and poverty. Unlikely friends, and later lovers, their small town beginnings in rural Ireland are swiftly eclipsed by the heady worlds of student Dublin. Gradually their intense, mismatched love becomes a battleground of power, class, and the falsehoods they choose to believe. It is a study of how one person can forever shape and impact another.