People know that Marianne lives in the white mansion with the driveway and that Connell's mother is a cleaner, but no one knows of the special relationship between these facts. Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner who has learnt from painful experience to stay away from her classmates. When the two strike up a conversation in Marianne's kitchen - awkward but electrifying - something life-changing begins. is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people - funny, magnetic, complex - who try to stay apart but find they can't. It shows us how difficult it is to change who we are. And with heartbreaking tenderness, it reveals how we learn about sex and power, the desire to hurt and be hurt, the desire to love and be loved. Here is an exquisite love story which breathes fiction with new life.

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The highly anticipated second novel from the most talked-about debut novelist of 2017. Sally Rooney set the books world buzzing last year with her debut Conversations With Friends; Normal People is a girl-meets-boy story with a difference, interrogating the difficulties of sincere communication in a complicated, post-ironic world. It's even more unusual and assured than her first book. Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years. This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life - a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us - blazingly - about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege. Alternating menace with overwhelming tenderness, Sally Rooney's second novel breathes fiction with new life.