Love as a conspiracy – a spoiler-review of Normal People

‘It’s not like this with other people‘ Marianne and Connell would say to each other after making love. What the TV series (and the book, so I hear) shows so beautifully is the conspiracy of the love affair between the two youngsters. It’s the reason we have all frankly lost our minds, cried our eyes out, and swore at our younger selves for entering lockdown without a partner.

“I’ m not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.”

It’s the great maybe lingering in every smile and stolen word between the two that punches us in the gut. The smile that spreads over their faces when they finally spot each other in a crowd.
So terrified to be in love, and yet throw themselves at every opportunity to do so!
Even after finishing their tale, we still do not know what will become of them, if their paths will stay intertwined.

“All these years, they’ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions.”

The love affair between Marianne and Connell started in secrecy, and they even allude to the fact that this made it “sexier“. It’s almost as if they refuse to live a happily ever after, choosing heartbreak and abandonment because it seems all the more familiar. They are as addicted to the longing and daydreaming as we all are, following them along on their journey.

“Is the world such an evil place, that love should be indistinguishable from the basest and most abusive forms of violence?”

I identified a lot with Marianne’s upbringing and Connell’s depression; a tinge of violence threaded into the whimsical lives at Trinity. Sex seems to be one way to heal from abuse, by either reenacting it or escaping unwanted emotions and abstaining.
“Its not like this with other people“, they said. For Connell, sex is mindless, drunk and hasty.
For Marianne, sex is rough, degrading and humiliating. It’s a miracle they manage to put away all their negative connotations towards love and dare to conspire to love.

If you like TV series, you might appreciate my recent posts about binging happy sitcoms and watching cringy TV. If you’ve watched Normal People, please let me know so we can swoon over the story together!