Normal People

by Sally Rooney

Connell feels certain about what he’s doing, but it’s a blank certainty, as if he’s blankly performing a memorised task. He finds that his fingers are in Marianne’s hair and he’s stroking the back of her neck calmly. He doesn’t know how long he has been doing this.

For weeks now she has had this feeling, the feeling of moving around inside a protective film, floating like mercury. The outside world touches against her outside skin, but not the other part of herself, inside.