Study Guide for Book Clubs: Normal People: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #44

By Kathryn Cope

An essential tool for all reading groups!

 

No reading group should be without this book club companion to Sally Rooney's bestselling novel, Normal People. This comprehensive guide includes useful background to the novel; a full plot summary, discussion of themes, detailed character notes, thought-provoking discussion questions, recommended further reading and a quick quiz.

 

Study Guides for Book Clubs are designed to help you get the absolute best from your book club meetings. They enable reading group members to appreciate their chosen book in greater depth than ever before.

 

Please be aware that this is a companion guide and does not contain the full text of the novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kathryn Cope
• Release date: Jun 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393537755

Kathryn Cope

Kathryn Cope graduated in English Literature from Manchester University and obtained her master’s degree in contemporary fiction from the University of York. She is the author of Study Guides for Book Clubs and the HarperCollins Offical Book Club Guide series. She lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands with her husband, son and dog.

Book preview

Introduction

There are few things more rewarding than getting together with a group of like-minded people and discussing a good book. Book club meetings, at their best, are vibrant, passionate affairs. Each member will bring along a different perspective, and ideally there will be heated debate.

Nevertheless, a surprising number of book club members report that their meetings have been a disappointment. Even when their group enjoyed the book in question, they could think of astonishingly little to say about it and soon wandered off-topic altogether. Failing to find interesting discussion angles for a book is the single most common reason for book group meetings to fall flat. Most groups only meet once a month, and a lacklustre meeting is frustrating for everyone.

Study Guides for Book Clubs were born out of a passion for reading groups. Packed with information, they take the hard work out of preparing for a meeting and ensure that your book group discussions never run dry. How you choose to use the guides is entirely up to you. The author biography and Genre & Style chapters both provide useful background information which may be worth sharing with your group early on. The all-important list of discussion questions, which will probably form the core of your meeting, can be found towards the end of this guide. To support your responses to the discussion questions, you will find it helpful to refer to the Setting, Themes, and Character sections.

A detailed plot synopsis is provided as an aide-memoire to recap on the finer points of the story. There is also a quick quiz—a fun way to test your knowledge and bring your discussion to a close. Finally, if this was a book that you enjoyed, the guide concludes with a list of further reads similar in style or subject matter.

This guide contains spoilers. Please do not be tempted to read it before you have finished the original novel as plot surprises will be well and truly ruined.

Kathryn Cope, 2020

Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney is an Irish author who lives in Dublin. She was born in Castlebar, County Mayo, in 1991. Her father worked for a telecom company, and her mother ran a community arts centre. She and her siblings were brought up with socialist values. The motto of the household was the Marxist dictum From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Rooney’s formative years bear more than a passing resemblance to the experiences of her fictional characters. She went to an all-girls school where she hated the lumpy grey pinafore and rigid rules. Nevertheless, her dislike of conformity did not harm her academic prospects. Despite refusing to do homework, she went on to study English at Trinity College, Dublin, in 2009.

Life at Trinity was an eye-opener for Rooney as she found herself mixing with the offspring of the very rich. Her response to this elitist environment was mixed: I had a feeling, on one hand, of being appalled, but on the other hand a real sense of wanting to prove myself to people, to prove I’m just as good as they are.

Rooney met her partner John Prasifka at Trinity. She was also elected a scholar. The financial award paid for her living expenses and tuition fees and enabled her to go on to a master's degree in American literature. While studying, she won the 2013 European University Debating championships. She also completed the first draft of her debut novel, Conversations with Friends.

The friends in Conversations with Friends are Bobbi and Frances, both studying at Trinity College. The young women, who happen to be ex-lovers, become involved in the lives of Melissa and Nick, an older married couple. While Bobbi is besotted with Melissa, Frances has an affair with Nick. Jealousy and misunderstandings abound between the four characters.

Rooney’s debut novel was subject to a seven-way auction for the publishing rights. It was released in 2017 accompanied by the marketing slogan, Salinger for the Snapchat generation. Readers seemed to agree that there was something fresh and powerful about Conversations with Friends. Several critics hailed its author as the first great literary voice of the millennial generation.

Rooney wasted little time in following her debut novel with another. Normal People was published in 2018. This second book had its roots in a short story she wrote at university. Originally published in the literary magazine, The White Review, At the Clinic focusses on two characters in their early twenties. As Connell takes Marianne to have a wisdom tooth removed, it becomes clear to readers that the protagonists share a complicated history. Intrigued by the dynamic she had created, Rooney decided to write another short story about the characters, which eventually evolved into the novel Normal People.

Again, Rooney’s work met with rapturous praise. Normal People won Irish Novel of the Year as well as the Costa Book Award and was named one of the best books of the year by numerous publications. In a co-production between the BBC and Hulu, the novel was adapted into a TV series (directed by Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald and written by Sally Rooney and Alice Birch).

Rooney’s first two novels have common threads. Both books share the backdrop of Trinity College and have a fledgling