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John Wick for vegans. 6.5/10

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Archive Review: Normal People by Sally Rooney (spoilers)

Archived (Originally reviewed 1/13/2021)

It took me less than a week to finish Sally Rooney’s Normal People. For once, the titular quote headlining the cover wasn’t simply there for looks: “A novel that demands to be read compulsively…” The book spills a narrative so captivating because in many ways you can undoubtedly identify with both Connell and Marianne and their complicated relationship as it weaves through the various stages of their lives. You root for them. You hope, just as you hope for yourself and your own complicated relationships, that things will work out no matter how messy they get; that these two people who seem fated for each other are in fact fated for each other and happily find each other in the end. Before I even picked up the book I was reminded of David Nicholl’s One Day and was subsequently preparing myself for a similar scenario to play out where [SPOILER] one of them dies in the end. I never forgave Nicholls for playing with my heart like that. At the time, I read that particular novel with my high school best friend, who I was incidentally in love with at the time. We’re still friends to this day. She recommended this book to me in fact. So, no doubt, like many others who read this book I was thinking of those bygone days in those opening chapters. I think it’s impossible not to get swept up in the familiarity of your own feelings when reading about the intimacy of others. You overlay your own memories like tracing paper, watching your life play out through these characters. It’s cathartic or therapeutic or maybe both. Connell and Marianne have such a complicated relationship that progresses through various stages of college life (depression, anxiety, bad relationships, muggings and beatings, various misunderstandings), there’s much to relate to. You’re invested immediately because you are invested into your own history seen in their dynamic. You want them to succeed because you want to succeed in your own happiness.

Thankfully the similarities between One Day and Normal People are not so extensive that we have to watch one of our main characters die just as they finally make it work. Yet, this does not then mean that Rooney gives us what we want. I don’t think she ever intended to. This is not a love story. Think 500 Days of Summer: “You should know that this is not a love story.” On the contrary, it’s a story about people and how they change us. Something, based on my conversations with friends (pun intended), the tv show may have missed. Indeed, one might read this novel or watch the show and be convinced and subsequently repulsed by the way the book/show seems to glorify an unhealthy relationship. Indeed, it may seem like Rooney purports the fatalistic idea that a woman needs to be saved and loved by a man in order to be whole (e.g., Marianne can only feel whole when Connell loves her). Or, and no less worse, that it makes it seem okay for Connell to constantly take advantage of a woman who so obviously is struggling with the traumatic events of her past (they take advantage of each other. I will show that this demonstrates the messy minutia of the role of power relationships and how it is never so clean cut) Does she play on the trope of a male savior? How can we reconcile the lines “she is an abyss he can reach into, an empty space for him to fill…Her body is just an item of property, and though it has been handed around and misused in various ways, it has somehow always belonged to him, and she feels like returning to him now. (242)?” I don’t think she does play on this trope. Instead, I think a more nuanced reading reveals a (corruptible) power dynamic that is inherent to all relationships (with others and ourselves) that Marianne eventually plays out in horrific ways due to her unresolved and continuing trauma. Rooney zooms in on these power relationships so much so that they seem to be the main theme of the book. Through these two characters Rooney demonstrates what we, every day, “normal people,” (roll credits) are willing to move and be moved by; how we are willing to comport ourselves around and for other people and for what reasons (even if they are not explicit to the people involved); the kinds of people we allow ourselves to become, actively pursue, fall into, or otherwise. It’s the reason why Marianne reflects on how she allowed herself to get caught up with Peggy and Jamie in the first place, people who exchange social currency in extremely materialistic, empty ways that she once deemed herself above. It’s also the reason why there is constant meditation on how people see each other and how they are willing to change to meet the gaze of another or themselves. After all, the ending line of the book, interspersed between Marianne and Connell’s conversation is “people can really change one another (273).” Let’s look at how people can really change one another by first focusing in on Marianne’s relationship with self-perception, love, and power dynamics—all of which lead her to the most provocative points in the book (of which I am offering a defense against the notion that Rooney falls for the male savior trope): sexual violence.

First, Marianne’s desire to be physically abused during sex is neither primarily rooted in a relationship with others nor derives from sexual gratification (barring characterizing her as a masochist and preventing a reading of the novel as an unfair depiction of BDSM culture). For Marianne, the sexual violence she submits to is primarily a relationship she has with herself. She desires to submit to the will of another, but never considers this an actual relationship. It’s rather, for her, a form of self-annihilation and subjugation. We see this most clearly in Sweden when Lukas begins to dominate her during their nude photoshoot. She submits (albeit reluctantly and unwillingly) to being gagged and having her wrists and ankles tied, but repulsively draws the line at Lukas’s words: “You see, I love you and I know you love me (203).” Marianne confesses that she “feels nothing” for Lukas. She uses him as a means to an end; the end being the confirmation of her supposed worthlessness, her ability to disappear so exceptionally into the nothingness that eats at her from inside: “You’re worthless, Lukas likes to tell her. You’re nothing. And she feels like nothing, an absence to be forcibly filled in. It isn’t that she likes the feeling, but it relieves her somehow (196).” I contend that this sense of worthlessness stems from the trauma she constantly grapples with at home. From an early age, Marianne is made to believe she is a monster incapable of being loved. Her father abuses her and her mom until he dies. Her brother picks up where her father left off with an added (heavy, incessant) dose of verbal beratement and psychological manipulation while her mother downplays the abuse and gives Marianne the impression that she has never and will never be a good enough daughter, upping the anty on the psychological manipulation (as if it could go any higher!). Her earliest experiences with love are already tied inextricably with violence and self-hatred and, knowing no other form of love, she accepts the hand fate has dealt her. In the place of love, she’ll accept violence. Why? Because it’s the most familiar form of love she has. As cheesy a line as it is, Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower line, “We accept the love we think we deserve” fits quite nicely here.

 Second, the perversion of her violent obsessions stems from a distortion in the power dynamic of a regular relationship: she does not believe she is worthy of love so she lives a farce of it, an extreme exaggeration of the element power plays in a healthy relationship. Connell is her healthiest relationship in the entire book. This does not mean that it is the pinnacle of healthy relationships, only that in terms of reference, Connell is the only thing she has that resembles a “normal” relationship in her life (her saving grace in terms of how she identifies herself. So long as she has Connell and he doesn’t see her as a monster, she can hold on to the shred of belief that she is not the monster she punishes herself for). This is important to note because it dispels the criticism that Rooney is in any way glorifying their dynamic. She is in fact demonstrating how to write a character well. We know that Marianne’s inclinations derive foremost from the trauma that has intertwined violence and love at home, but it’s after Connell that she begins to nose dive into sexual violence. In her words: “It’s not that I get off to being degraded as such…It’s about the dynamic, more than what actually happens…It was different with you…I didn’t need to play any games with you…It was real. With Jamie it’s like I’m acting out a part, I just pretend to feel that way, like I’m in his power. But with you that really was the dynamic, I actually had those feelings, I would have done anything you wanted me to” (137-9). Violence is the place holder for the real dynamic she had with Connell. But what was this real dynamic? We know its extreme distortion, but what is it a distortion of? Let’s examine their relationship at two specific points: first in high school, which starts the dynamic (and her life, she confesses) and second, in college, which solidifies her identification of that dynamic.

 In high school, Connell is the first and only person to actually talk to Marianne. He breaks the ice on what she assumes is the general opinion of her when he tells her that he doesn’t hate her. “That gets her attention (6)” and from then on Connell holds a special kind of power over her. She sees in him a version of herself that she doesn’t hate and for that she’s willing to do whatever he wants. Relationships, with all their intentions, impulses, and (inclinations?), are messy, let alone high school relationships. Connell takes advantage of Marianne.

 1. By being kept a secret, it confirms that love (acc. to her personal narrative) is rooted in self-hatred; she is not worthy enough to be publicized. 2. By being ignored, he confirms her mother’s claims that she is monstrosity that cannot be loved. 3. By going to the Debs with her humiliator, Connell justifies the violence done to her and ultimately rejects her (or at least this is how it is interpreted… more on the role of misinterpretation later), confirming that love is tied with repudiation and humiliation. (Or this could all be bullshit) [I think I might be digging to deep into her psyche.]

 In college, their dynamic becomes easy, tactful. The give and take of their relationship is the best we see in the novel. The power dynamic is an open field designed for free play. It’s not ironic that a misunderstanding tears them asunder. Another example of how the lines aren’t so easily drawn. I love Rooney for this. You first think, “oh what a fucking prick! First he fucking takes advantage of her in high school for sex then he dumps her in college?” But you know it doesn’t make sense. When you get the full picture of the break up you see that neither of them breaks up with the other, but wrapped in their own insecurities assumes the worst. The lovable dumb asses.

 Rooney writes that the moment Connell tells her he loves her, her life begins. If there is a narrative tension for our main character (who is undoubtedly Marianne btw) it is between two points in the novel: this moment where she is trapped in the cycle of identifying love and trauma as one and the end when she is freed from it (what hold these two poles together is Connell—how she sees herself through Connells eyes).

 When Rooney writes the above, it’s Marianne at her most vulnerable and confused. “How can someone ever confuse that violence with love?” The book doesn’t elevate Connell for not wanting to be violent with her in bed, nor does it justify Marianne’s craving for violence. Marianne is able to reclaim her life, not because Connell saves her, but because through Connell she can recognize a version of herself that she doesn’t hate, one that doesn’t need corrected through violence. This recognition is wholly her own by the end without Connell.

  This review remains incomplete and at times fragmentary. The main argument ends up petering out, I realize, but it is not without a conclusion. Yet, I don’t think I will be able to pick up the loose ends I left for myself one year ago without re-reading it, but I believe it is whole enough to be published here. I remember this book and mini-series fondly. It spoke to a debate I was having with a lover at the time on if love and power were inextricable. I argued that power is an imminent part in all relations, especially love. She disagreed, arguing that the purest love transcended power completely. I never could convince her that power need not be so negative. That, in the end, the most implicit expressions of love that come out of great relationships were nothing if not the resonations of each individual’s power. What is such a love if not vibrating along the same frequency? If power were music, love would be harmony and resonance, conflict discordant. The fluctuations of power tell a story and lovers embody that story through each gesture, through each anticipation (be it anticipation of lips on flesh or a reassuring touch, a knowing glance). Power is embodied and the love that overflows from moving and being moved by a lover, partner, or friend cannot be without that power. To say you have power over me doesn’t have to be dominating (as Marianne discovered). To say you have power over me can also mean: I am moved by you, inspired, overjoyed. I comport my life to our mutual concerns, to the way you simply fill up a room. I consider you in my decisions; you have an interest in the future I project. My body feels the weight of your presence and I allow myself to be affected by it. To say you have power over me can also mean I love you.

And love, just as power, is polysemic; it has so many meanings and forms of expression. In Marianne’s case, through her growth, it was recognizing that (self)love always already operates on a field of power with all the traps and pitfalls of conflict and violence. Loving oneself through the eyes of another, through the eyes of Connell, allowed her to, in the end, let go of that image, let go of Connell. It wasn’t Connell that sustained her. It wasn’t Connell who either was the exception to the rule of her worthlessness or the best example. She realizes it was a false dichotomy, a distortion of power/love she saw in her everyday life. That’s why in the end she can let him go. Her love for him was no longer tied to the love she had for herself. She loved him selflessly; she felt the weight of his presence and knew that his absence wouldn’t break her.

 This novel remains a misunderstood meditation on love, power, and trauma. A true coming of age story with all the complexities of sex and love. A masterpiece that takes time to unravel and encourages introspection. 9/10

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Review: Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk

The first thing I read by Olga Tokarczuk was her afterward to Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet. It was so exceptionally written that I sought her out for my next haul of books back in December 2021. I would save her for last. I’m so happy I did. Primeval felt like the wonder of Italo Calvino’s The Complete Cosmicomics mixed with the genealogical tragedy of Gabriel García Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude. There’s so much here that Tokarczuk gives her reader. So much to mourn, so much to grow with. The magical realism is like a sieve for all the events of these people’s lives, sifting the meaning out of all the heavy events. What you have is an outpouring of beautiful, sometimes tragic episodes. Too many times, the world is cruel, the people are unfaithful and false. But distilled are the moments of pure sincerity, like the moment Florentynka forgives the moon.

Is the world of Primeval really a singular universe for our characters? Can they really not leave? Is leaving an illusion? It doesn’t matter because for us, the reader, and so many who live their lives there, Primeval is the whole universe. And the world ends over and again:

“the sorrow that under[lies] everything. The sorrow that [is] present in every single thing, in every phenomenon . . .  it’s impossible to grasp everything at once.”

10/10

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So last year I got to have a special affair with @theinternet 🥂. We spoke genre, Grammy nominations, new projects and all that soul music we all seemed to grow up on. While the picture isn’t the coolest, the people in it and their sound definitely is but you already knew that 🤷🏾‍♀️💅🏾. I’m giving myself a shameless plug so don’t cha wanna check it out on @10and5 and let me know what you think?🎈 #ctjazzfest #wordsandthings #theinternetdefiesgenre #throwback (at Cape Town, Western Cape)

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