Normal People

by Sally Rooney

I love you. I’m not just saying that, I really do.

She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.

he was glad he was dead, he never wanted to be alive again.

He always reflexively imagined ways to cause himself extreme injury when he was distressed.

All I’ve learned here is how to say ‘no thank you’ (nej tack) and ‘really, no’ (verkligen, nej). Talk soon xxx

But it was hard to dismiss something she had admittedly been hearing all her life from various sources: that she was mentally unwell and needed help.

In the following days, people from school posted status updates about suicide awareness.

Lots of people from school had left comments on his wall, saying they missed him. What were these people doing, Marianne thought, writing on the Facebook wall of a dead person? What did these messages, these advertisements of loss, actually mean to anyone? What was the appropriate etiquette when they appeared on the timeline: to ‘like’ them supportively? To scroll past in search of something better?

Well, I like you a lot more than other people.