Normal People

by Sally Rooney

Eventually she laughed, because she wasn’t totally without spirit, and it obviously was kind of funny, just how savagely he had humiliated her, and his inability to apologize or even admit he had done it.

It seemed to soothe him briefly, the act of imagining a much worse and more totalizing pain than the one he really felt, maybe just the cognitive energy it required, the momentary break in his train of thought, but afterward he would only feel worse.

To be known as her boyfriend plants him firmly in the social world, establishes him as an acceptable person, someone with a particular status,

Still, Connell went home that night and read over some notes he had been making for a new story, and he felt the old beat of pleasure inside his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car. Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.

But he was also a very insecure person, obsessed with popularity, and his desperation had made him cruel.

she remembered a time several years ago when she had felt so intelligent and young and powerful that she almost could have achieved such a thing, and now she knew she wasn’t at all powerful, and she would live and die in a world of extreme violence against the innocent, and at most she could help only a few people.

She looks at him above the veil of white tissue, and in a rush he feels his power over her again, the openness in her eyes.

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.