Will Hulu's 'Normal People' achieve the same cult status that Sally Rooney's book of the same name did?
When Irish novelist Sally Rooney's second novel 'Normal People' came out in 2018, it quietly built up a storm. Soon, everyone was posting pictures of the book as it created an Instagram fever. The book got longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and even won the Costa Award for Best Novel.
'Normal People' chronicled the complicated love story of Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron -- two Irish teenagers from rural Ireland who come from different social classes and yet keep finding their way back to each other as they grow older and wiser.
When their story first begins, they are high schoolers -- Connell is shy, smart, athletic, and popular while Marianne is intelligent, brash, outspoken, and an outcast. What connects them is Connell's mother who works as a maid at Marianne's house.
The two characters find they can talk to each other more openly than they can talk to anyone else and that is what draws them closer at first and what keeps bringing them back together despite multiple breakups. At first, Connell holds the power over Marianne and she uses sex as a way to keep him happy -- not because Connell wants it, but because despite both of them being the same, sex is the only time they feel equal to each other.
As high school ends, so does their relationship and they go to Trinity College in Dublin, though they don't see each other for a while. In college, they find their way back to each other again -- and so it keeps happening, the cycle of breakups and reconciliations.
The frustration that comes from this is oddly one of the things that draw readers to their story and make them root for the couple -- the frustration they get a glimpse of because the book details the inner thoughts of these characters.
Rooney's novel had people lauding her as the "first great millennial novelist" and "millennial soothsayer". Suddenly, it seemed like 'Normal People' was on everybody's shelves and the book even soon scored an adaptation that releases in a few days.
Perhaps Rooney's quotes from 'Normal People' can explain why young people around the world fell in love with it. In one part of the book, Rooney writes, "Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it." In another, she writes, "No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not."
Both these quotes -- and others in the book -- perfectly capture the uncertainty and the isolation that has come with being a millennial growing up in the midst of a capitalist economy that keeps crashing much too regularly. And Bookstagram -- the Instagram community that shares updates on all things books, agreed.
The question is whether BBC and Hulu's joint adaptation of Rooney's 'Normal People' will be as successful. While we think the first couple of episodes perfectly captures the same feeling that reading the book gives, the lack of access to Marianne and Connell's thoughts makes the rest of the season miss the oomph that the book had.
Early reviews promise that the show will be quite good. Rolling Stone wrote that the adaptation is "delicate, extremely interior material, at times told in leisurely sequences." IndieWire writes that 'Normal People' keeps "compelling you to keep watching even when you want to savor what’s come before."
Perhaps if it had come out at any other time, 'Normal People' might not have been the show that viewers needed. But at this point, when most of us are sequestered and craving company, romantic or otherwise, 'Normal People' could somehow make us feel lonely, but happy about it. In doing so, the adaptation may very well be Rooney's trailblazing welcome into the world of television.
All episodes of 'Normal People' are released for streaming on Hulu in the United States on 29th April.