Massey College [VIRTUAL] Book Club: Normal People by Sally Rooney

Monday, February 1, 2021 at 5:00 – 6:00 pm EST

Join us for a virtual discussion of Normal People the bestselling novel by Sally Rooney.

This event will be broadcast online and is free and open to all – there is no login or registration required to tune in. Click here to watch the livestream.

Sandra Martin,one of the original members of the Quadrangle Society, is the founder of what is now called the Massey Book Club. Sandra will be in conversation with Junior Fellow Miriam Hird-Younger.

Sandra Martin is an award winning Globe and Mail journalist and magazine writer and the author of several books, including Working the DeadBeat: 50 Lives that Changed Canada and A Good Death: Making the Most of Our Final Choices. She is also the editor of the anthology, The First Man in Life: Daughters Write About Their Fathers. Her current project focuses on the perils and pleasures of aging.

Miriam Hird-Younger is a researcher and practitioner in the field of international development with a focus on participatory development, food and agricultural systems, gender and youth leadership. She is a PhD Candidate and Vanier Scholar in the Anthropology Department, collaborative with Women and Gender Studies, at the University of Toronto. Miriam’s doctoral research critically examines trust-based policy discourses and how trust and mistrust are negotiated in development partnerships in Ghana. Miriam has been a Junior Fellow with Massey College since 2017.

About the Book:

#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
A PENGUIN BOOK CLUB PICK

A wondrously wise, genuinely unputdownable novel from Sally Rooney, winner of the 2017 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award (at 26, tied with Zadie Smith for the youngest-ever recipient)–the quintessential coming-of-age love story for our time.

Connell Waldron is one of the most popular boys in his small-town high school–he is a star of the football team, an excellent student, and never wanting for attention from girls. The one thing he doesn’t have is money. Marianne Sheridan, a classmate of Connell’s, has the opposite problem. Marianne is plain-looking, odd, and stubborn, and while her family is well-off, she has no friends to speak of. There is, however, a deep and undeniable connection between the two teenagers, one that develops into a secret relationship.

Everything changes when both Connell and Marianne are accepted to Trinity College. Suddenly Marianne is well-liked and elegant, holding court with her intellectual friends while Connell hangs at the sidelines, not quite as fluent in language of the elite. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle each other, falling in and out of romance but never straying far from where they started. And as Marianne experiments with an increasingly dangerous string of boyfriends, Connell must decide how far he is willing to go to save his oldest friend.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a novel that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the inescapable challenges of family and friendships. Normal People is a book that you will read in one sitting, and then immediately share with your friends.