Should You Watch or Read Normal People First?

If you've read this blog at all in the last two years, you'll know I love Sally Rooney's novels. I didn't always feel that way. I read them the first time in the major frenzy around Rooney when the BBC adaption released in 2020, and it wasn't the right time for me. Honestly, I was too young to get it. I hadn't read enough literary fiction to be acclimated to the quirks in the prose like the lack of quotation marks that feel second nature now. I got lucky and read it again a while later and found the spark of the book. Normal People is now among the books that have most changed my life. To date, I believe I've read Normal People four times and seen the show all the way through three times. I've read passages and watched random episodes here and there, but after finishing my most recent re-read, I was struck by the reminder that the largely faithful TV adaptation does often deviate or alter details to better suit the screen. Which got me thinking about a question I've been asked a few times by friends: to read the book or watch the adaption first? It's a surprisingly pertinent question even close to five years after the show and even longer since the book was published. 

For nearly any other book/adaptation, I would say without a doubt, read the book first. It's usually leagues better and it's not worth having the film taint your view of the book. For Normal People, this is a more interesting question, not because the book isn't amazing but because each medium drags something different out of the story. The BBC adaption is fantastic, leaned heavily on Rooney's involvement, and was expertly cast. The use of a limited series allowed for the preservation of nearly all the plot beats. Re-reading the book, I thought it was interesting how the biggest alterations were the moving of a certain conversation from one setting to another that would be more visually compelling. But large swaths of the dialogue are ripped right out of the book. While I don't think that you can go wrong on either path of consumption, I might suggest, especially for people who aren't big readers of literary fiction, that you start with the show.

Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar Jones are perfectly cast in their roles as Connell and Marianne. The entire show is so well cast that having these actors in your head won't take away from the experience of building the world of the book in your head. Especially if you're not the kind of reader who easily forms mental pictures, I think that the visuals of the show are helpful to have in mind. So much of the communication in this novel about miscommunication is physical that seeing it acted on the screen brings an unspoken tenderness that's harder to access through words. The acting is truly fantastic, and it brings out the chemistry between Connell and Marianne spectacularly. I feel like one of the biggest criticisms of the book come from people who can't figure out what attracts Marianne and Connell back to each other over and over again, and I think that the show expresses that palpable, nearly indescribable pull between them. Also, in some ways, the show simplifies some of the plot beats in a way that's helpful for becoming familiar with the contours of the relationship. While there are differences from the book, there aren't any massive divergences that alter the essence or would be off-putting before or after experiencing the book. The BBC show does a great job of getting rid of many of the barriers people have when they come to Normal People as a book for the first time. 

Then I would suggest you read the book because, if you're anything like me or the people who still get on the subreddit for the show, you'll want to continue living in the story. The novel is the perfect continuation. Being familiar with the story will make the access to the interiority of the characters, their own internal monologues, even more interesting. There's also just more details and a few additional scenes that further flesh out the characters and the world. These hold extra weight once the story already feels comfortably broken in. Also, having a familiarity with the story should help with any hurdles presented by the lack of quotation marks. I find Rooney's writing, especially in her early books, to be compulsively readable and easy to finish in a flurry of pages in a single day. Having the existing sketch of the show should only make the novel more accessible. 

I truly see the limited series and the novel, in this particular situation, to be true companions with one another. Consuming one doesn't negate the importance of the other. They stand alone as individually interpreted pieces of work with the same story at their core. It is also a fascinating case of showcasing the strengths of different mediums between film and novels. Put together, they make an even more spectacular whole. 

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