Joseph Pfeffer answers “So I am just getting to the point in this...”

Margie asked this question about Normal People:

So I am just getting to the point in this where Marianne has started to eat less and less, fixating on her food and savouring it. Essentially, it reads like she's moving towards anorexia if she hasn't already. Without giving too much away, does it have a happier ending? Does she get therapy? I know too many people with severe mental health problems in real life to want to read further if it doesn't :(

Joseph Pfeffer While I gave the book a rave, and stand by that, the ending seems the less satisfying the more time I put between me and the book. Basically, Connell …moreWhile I gave the book a rave, and stand by that, the ending seems the less satisfying the more time I put between me and the book. Basically, Connell is still fucking Marianne over. He's always tended to stuff her in the closet, pull her out when he wants to fuck her, then put her back in. Admittedly, that all changes when he refuses to hit her, then saves her from the psychotically rageful Alan.

But in the last scene we see what starts as a moment of domestic bliss turn into yet another game-playing move by Connell. He's accepted a scholarship to something like the Columbia MFA program, but he doesn't tell Marianne until he gets accepted - until, that is it's a done deal. As usual, Marianne overreacts, which Connell must have known she would do. So the dynamic between the two of them has not changed. It probably never will. And we have the makings of a sequel.

What's unsatisfying, though, is that the ending feels unbalanced. Connell is going to move on to literary glory. Marianne has a boring job and is working on a deadly dull degree in political science. She'll stay in Dublin while Connell does New York. He'll no doubt find a new girlfriend, an artsy American girl from Barnard, let us say, and then he'll reationalize that to Marianne. Marianne, meanwhile, will fall back into her masochism which is never far away. She's the loser. (I hate it when a great book has an unsatisfying ending, because it colors my view of the entire book.)(less)

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Katy V Interesting. I see where you're coming from in it seeming as though the book ends with Connell seemingly having a bright future and Marianne being stu ...more
May 17, 2020 12:39AM · flag

Emanuel Smedbøl What a sad interpretation. I never saw Connell as playing games, it is just a book about crap self esteem and miscommunication.
Aug 07, 2020 01:15PM · flag

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