Normal People Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Why Young Adults Are Choosing the Suicide Option and our BookBrowse Review of Normal People.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. While living at home in Carricklea, Connell's sense of self is managed by the opinions of his peers in secondary school. To that end, he avoids being publicly seen with Marianne, an outcast in school, fearing how their association might damage his reputation.
   
   Were you critical of Connell for the way he treated Marianne in school, or were you sympathetic toward his adolescent self-consciousness? Do you think he became less concerned by the thoughts of others as he grew older?
2. With Marianne, Connell feels a sense of "total privacy" in which "he could tell her anything about himself, even weird things, and she would never repeat them, he knows that. Being alone with her is like opening a door away from normal life and then closing it behind him" (6–7).
   
   Why do you think Connell is sometimes unnerved by their intense and intimate connection? Further, why do you think he's unsettled by the sense that Marianne would do anything to please him?
3. The first time Connell tells Marianne he loves her, we are told that "She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life" (46).
   
   Do you think Marianne had ever been told that she was loved, in any sense of the word, by anyone before Connell? How can the experience of "first love" transform a person's self-image and view of the world?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Hogarth Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.