By Sheilla Cohen.
I’m not a huge fan of best sellers, not that I have anything against mainstream novels, it´s just that I hate that how the industry imposes trends and lets be honest not most of them are even well written despite being a commercial phenomenon. Also my literary interests are different, I’m not that much into fiction, but rather into autobiographies, aphorisms, essays, poems, etc.
However, when I heard the about the cultural phenomenon that caused Hulu series adaptation of Sally Rooney’s book, attracting over 16 million views only in the UK. I needed to know understand why, but I had to read the book first obviously.
Some books leave a mark on you, these is one of those. I couldn’t get my hands of it, I even had to set a limit on myself and read only fifty pages every day, because I didn’t want it to end, but I couldn’t get my mind out of this captivating love story.
For those who haven’t read it yet, I’m not going to give any spoilers, but I it’s easy to get immersed into the problematic relationship of Marianne and Connell. I think it was the exquisitely detailed way in which Rooney describes the protagonist love story, their inner thoughts and emotions they’re were feeling every single moment as if she was god watching them from above, hearing them, as if they were living creatures.
This ability to draw the characters from inside out, made you feel sympathy for their flaws, insecurities and decisions they make along the way, while they’re trying to find their place in the real world outside their school town bubble in the west of Ireland.
This coming of age/ sexual awakening story will get you so hooked up into the complexities of an on-and off-again relationship that you won’t be able to leave the book aside. Their emotions and gestures feel so real and intense that will get you caught up on this turbulent story of friendship and love experienced by two people who try to stay apart, but find they can’t.
The series is not as good as the book, but it is quite as addictive. However their interpretations and chemistry on the screen couldn’t be more authentic. Although, I wish they could have expressed more their inner thoughts and emotions; being that is what this book is all about: the confusion and uncertainty you experience since you leave school until your late twenties. Trying to find your place in the world, figuring out who you want to be and what you want to achieve in the world.
It certainly brought me back the nostalgic felling of my first love, although it was nothing compared to theirs; it also reminded me the moment I had to decide my college degree and the idealist I was with my confident opinions debating with my classmates as if we were actually going to change the world. How naïve I was! If only I knew back then, how things would change the moment you set your foot into the real world.
There are a lot of steamy explicit sex scenes, but so does in the book. They’re experiencing the rush of hormones you have when you are young, wild and carefree. There are also a lot of silences, the stillness of life, reminding us to find beauty in the mundane, but also, that the ordinary or being normal is so underrated.