Defining Normal For A New Generation

TIRISH AUTHOR SALLY ROONEY STAKED her claim as the novelist of the millennial generation with her stunning 2017 debut, Conversations With Friends, which tells the story of a bisexual communist who expresses the emotions she can’t in person through emails and texts. It’s a nuanced portrait of modern romance, yet it closes on a surprisingly traditional, upbeat note—suggesting that our most familiar tropes die hard.

- Eliana Dockterman

Rooney, 28, mines similar territory in her latest love story, the equally engrossing but still more conventional Normal People. This book’s protagonists, Marianne and Connell, are in many ways opposites: She comes from a cold, wealthy family, he from one that’s cash-strapped but rich in love; she doesn’t care what others think of her, he does. But they share an anxiety about achieving “normalcy,” that bonds them. They enter into an on-again, off-again relationship that takes them through high school and college.