I think I am doing this novel a disservice for rating it relatively low, but anyway here are my thoughts.

Reading this novel was a strange experience for me. Two parts of my personality—the pseudo-intellectual who constantly analyzes every word and passage and the simple everyman who just wants to enjoy a story—were always on the verge of clashing with each other. Oil and water, they never compromise, one had to be on top. That's why it took me a whole day to finish this short book.

Sally Rooney has created this one of a kind story that was both stale and riveting at the same time. There was an unnamable element, one I couldn't put my finger on, present in the story that enchanted me up to the last pages despite me not liking everything I'm reading. A manifestation of masochism? Or maybe a denial of something that's really a masterpiece? That I couldn't tell.

This slice-of-life novels tells the story of two co-dependent people hooking up with each other, to navigate and survive the waves of an Irish life. As they grew older, their relationship changes, more people come partying into the pool, but in the end, it's still them figuring out what they should do best.

My main concern with this novel was the writing. Yes, the writing. Sally Rooney, as what I have observed, is not a visual writer. She tends to tell more than show. She tells you what this character feels, instead of creating vivid imagery and gorgeous metaphors to ground you to the current emotional state of the scene. I guess that's what my everyman self was worried about, he was bored. But my pseudo-intellectual persona would say that there was a jewel hidden underneath the pile of sand. There's coarseness into a it, a hurdle of enjoyment obviously, but if you would tread slowly and with a careful pace, you would unearth a shining jewel. Maybe there really was a gem hidden under those seemingly-mundane and inconsequential prose.

So I did continue reading. Then I realized that these characters were so annoying and should go back to elementary to relearn the fundamentals of proper communication. All they had were spotty conversations, full of indifference. Even if it was in the third person narrative, the author didn't seem to give the readers the scope of what they feel inside, the details of their inner thoughts. I felt like she wants us to decipher it on our own and leave everything to our interpretation. Which I think was good (I dunno, I'm not a literary expert) but for me as a reader, it felt so alienating.

All of the things above seemed so negative but what I really liked about this novel was the character exploration especially when

Spoiler

it was revealed that Connell has depression and Marianne has been abused and has eating disorder

This was the moment where I felt that the writing had improved for my interest, I was slowly interested again with the characters, somehow I understood why they acted the way they acted in the first parts, and their feelings were now more articulate than the first 70% of the book.

To summarize everything, I think this book represents almost perfectly the romantic relationship that happens in modern day. How our personal upbringing, the traumas we had experience in the past could shape how we present ourselves to other people. This was like a fictional documentary that didn't need solid character arcs, just honest representation. I was okay with it, in its nature but as a story, I am somehow not??? Oh, what a conundrum!

PS: Maybe I should watch the TV show to feel everything that I should've felt when I was reading.