Friends 'til the End if the End is the Middle

I know, I know.  What's up with the winter reading material?  Summer just started, and it's too early for Christmas in July.  But I have a good excuse for turning to holiday homicide.  It's because I was fleeing Sally Rooney.

Yes, Sally Rooney, acclaimed author of Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You, both of which I enjoyed, especially Normal People.  But when I got halfway through Rooney's debut, Conversations with Friends, which is about a college student having an affair with a married man, I had to put it down.  

The college student -- Frances -- is bleeding and in pain (whether or not as the result of sex with the married guy is unclear) and needs to be rushed to the ER.  Now, as you may know, I have a history of not doing well with books about blood.  Add psychological torment, and I'm a goner.  So I closed the book before I could feel that first nauseous twinge and reached for Mary Daheim's The Alpine Winter.  It was the only new, known quantity left on my shelf.  Also, if there's a story that'll cheer me up, then it's one about finding a body after eating turkey and unwrapping mittens.  Books -- much like life -- are all about tone.  And the tone of a yuletide murder peopled by even-keeled characters is preferable to the one of a girl in pain losing her mind.  

Still, I don't like being bested by a book.  It's only happened to me twice, once with The Help and once with a bargain book whose name I can't remember.  (Somehow, some way, I even managed to finish The Bell Jar.)  And I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't curious about how things pan out for Frances.  So maybe someday I'll pick up the thread of Rooney's Conversations again.  (I didn't throw it out like I did The Help.)  But for now I'm ensconced in Alpine and its small-town eccentricities.

Because sometimes cold comfort is the warmest kind.  

And some friends are best left behind.

Love Lessons: Girl World Unfurled

When I opened Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You, I wasn't sure what to expect.  Even if I did gain an inkling from the thought-provoking post on Ivy & Ellie.  I was cautiously excited (if that's even a thing) because I'd loved Normal People.  Still, I sensed that this book would be different.  And I was right.  Sort of.

Alice and Eileen have been best friends since college.  Now in their late twenties, both are ladies of letters, Alice as a famous novelist and Eileen as a small-time magazine editor.  They also write letters to each other, long, scholarly-sounding emails lamenting the evils of capitalism and their guilt about caring about their love lives more than global warming and starvation.  Although World has the trifecta of elements commonly featured in women's fiction, i.e., man woes, job woes, and family woes, we're not in chick lit land anymore.  I'm not going to lie; the letters are a little tedious and sometimes hard to take.  Nevertheless, I can't deny that they're special.  They show what a close friendship these women share and are endearing in their honesty.  I wanted to write to Alice and Eileen myself and say, hey, the weight of the world isn't on your shoulders.  And therein, I think, lies Rooney's point: being young is a painful business.

Yet despite their torment, both Alice and Eileen dread growing up.  It takes them a long time to realize that the end of adolescence can be the beginning of everything else, freeing them from the pressure to be perfect.  In other words, the beautiful world has been there all along, but they've been too troubled to see it.   

That's the thing about this book.  Even as Rooney ever so gently satirizes her heroines, there's never a doubt that she feels for them, or that their angst is any less real.  If anything, she wants them to get past the demons that plague them, to accept themselves -- and the world -- as they are.  And as lofty and remote as this book sometimes is, it doesn't get much more poignant than that.  It's why Alice ultimately reverses her position on love, deciding that despite -- or because of -- all the hurt in the world, love isn't trivial, but all there is:

"So of course in the midst of everything, the state of the world being what it is, humanity on the cusp of extinction, here I am writing another email about sex and friendship.  What else is there to live for?" (146)

So Alice is a closet romantic.  Which isn't too far off the mark from chick lit.  

Put that in your vape pen and smoke it, Bechdel Test. 

Social Norms and Self-made Storms: Squeeze in Under the Umbrella

Ordinary People.  Smart People.  Funny People.  Any book or movie title with "people" at the end seems to promise to reveal something disturbing yet profound about the human condition.  And Normal People does it in spades.  When I first heard of the Hulu original series, I wanted to watch it.  And then when I heard it started out as a book, I wanted to read it and then watch it.  So I did.  

Normal People is the story of Connell and Marianne, two high school seniors in the Irish backwater of Sligo who start sleeping together but don't tell anyone.  Connell is popular but poor, and Marianne is rich but an outcast.  Connell's mother cleans Marianne's family's house; that's how Connell and Marianne get to know each other.  Yet, for all their differences, both are very smart -- and very damaged.  For Marianne, being brainy -- and argumentative -- is her identity, a way to be strong and separate herself from the abuse she suffers at the hands of her brother.  For Connell, who's shy, the life of the mind is a source of shame and one that sets him apart from his fellow in-crowders -- except when they want to copy his homework.  Marianne can't care less about being liked, but fitting in means everything to Connell, and he does whatever it takes to protect the fragile equilibrium of his social standing.  It doesn't matter that he doesn't like his friends and can't talk to them the way he talks to Marianne.  His acceptance from them means that he can accept himself.  Still, despite -- or perhaps because of -- her pariah-hood, Marianne mesmerizes him.  She convinces him to apply to the same Dublin college as her and to major in English despite its lack of earning potential because, as she puts is, "it's the only subject you enjoy."  In this way they create their own private world, both real and unreal because no one (except Connell's mom) knows about it.  Which is lovely and passionate and cozy.  Until something happens and it isn't, starting a cycle of heartbreak that may never be broken.  

When Marianne and Connell start college the following fall, they're estranged.  But eventually they run into each other.  And Connell discovers that now it's Marianne who belongs.  Like their classmates, she comes from money and can launch into intellectual debates with fervor and ease.  Connell, on the other hand, has one pair of shoes and trips over his words.  Yet despite all of this and their troubled past, Marianne draws Connell into her circle.  Although she now has the upper hand, she still lets people hurt her.  In a strange way, this gives their relationship balance, and before long, Marianne and Connell find that they're the same as they ever were, two misunderstoods just trying to make their way.      

As time goes on, Connell finds his voice, speaking up in class in an earnest if unpolished way that reveals his love of books.  He also starts writing short stories, although it's years before he lets Marianne read one.  Writing puts him in touch with his real self, but it's painful.  When people ask Marianne if he's really smart, she says that he's the smartest person she knows.  Connell and Marianne are happy in their bubble, best friends and more and closer than ever.  But when summer comes, Connell loses his job and can't pay his rent.  His insecurities about being poor resurface.  Rather than moving in with Marianne and being beholden to her, he slinks home to Sligo where nothing ever changes and he can feel normal again.  Only being normal has gotten harder, and, as Connell soon realizes, going home in the metaphorical sense is no longer an option.  

Normal People is very real and very raw.  It examines socioeconomic disparity, depression, and domestic violence.  There's nothing cute or whimsical about it, and at times that makes it hard to read.  The TV show is the same, so much so that the dialogue mirrors the book to the letter.  This quality, mixed with the timeless allure of doomed romance, makes both the book and the show heartbreaking.  But they need to be this way to deliver their message: life makes it hard to be true to yourself, sometimes even to the point of having the courage to be with the person you love.  The road to peace begins when you value yourself enough to stop being someone you're not.  It's the bleakness of this struggle -- universal to everyone and particular, in this case, to Connell and Marianne -- that allows you to appreciate the sun when it creeps through the clouds in the hopeful albeit ambiguous ending.  This last act suggests that good things are ahead for Connell and Marianne because of the things that they've taught each other.

Because as even the most seemingly sane person will tell you, there's no such thing as being normal.