See - I'm just a little confused about what I feel. Did you mean like as a friend or what?ĮDGAR-JONES: (As Marianne) No, not just as a friend. PAUL MESCAL: (As Connell) You know, you were saying the other day that you like me - by the photocopier, you said it. After all, they share a chemistry that's always been obvious, as in this scene early on, during the run up to their first kiss. I kept waiting, not a little impatiently, for them to finally stay together. Predictably, they wind up back in bed together, launching an on-again, off-again relationship containing many annoying moments of miscommunication. Suddenly, the worldly Marianne is the cool one, while working-class Connell is the outsider. The power dynamic flips when they go to study at Dublin's elite Trinity College. Still, Connell insists on keeping their connection secret, lest he somehow be mortified in front of his friends. With Marianne taking the lead, they soon start sleeping together, all the time, making love with the thrilling intimacy they find nowhere else in the world. The two begin talking at Marianne's home, where his mother cleans house for her lawyer mom. But his sensitive inner self feels straitjacketed. He's a good student, a star jock and a popular dude. In contrast, Connell - played by Paul Mescal - wears the outward garb of success. Other students think she's plain and weird. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays the brainy Marianne, who's off-puttingly and unhappily abnormal. The action begins in West Ireland's County Sligo with two alienated high school students.
Her second and most recent novel, "Normal People," has just been adapted into a 12-part Hulu series directed by Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald.Īwash in steamy romance, this tale of tumultuous young love is like a John Hughes movie reworked by Jane Austen. One who's found a fertile middle ground between ardor and irony is 29-year-old Sally Rooney, the acclaimed Irish novelist whose books many of my younger women friends pass around like talismanic texts. Artists would sooner seem heartless than embarrassingly sincere.
JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: This is a tough century for stories of passionate love, not because people don't love each other passionately anymore but because today's reigning cultural style is ironic rather than romantic. Our critic at large John Powers says the show is stronger on feelings than ideas.
It tells the story of a will-they-or-won't-they romance between a young Irish couple who first meet in high school.
The new TV series "Normal People," which drops today on Hulu, is adapted from the prizewinning, bestselling novel by Sally Rooney.