The premier date for the TV adaption of Sally Rooney’s Normal People is quickly approaching. All twelve episodes of the BBC/Hulu show will be released on BBC Three (UK only) on 26 April and on the Hulu streaming service on 29 April. RTE announced earlier this month that they would also broadcast the series, showing the first two episodes on RTE One on 28 April at 10.15PM . The BBC also announced last month that Rooney’s debut novel, Conversation with Friends, would get the silver screen treatment. Production begins sometime next year. If you’re looking for books to read during lockdown, perhaps you might gear up for the series by digging into some of the texts littered within the author’s novels.
IN CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS:
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennesse Williams
“… Nick’s in the Royal this month, Melissa said. He’s doing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof...”
Tennesse Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955 and continues to spawn countless productions, one of the most famous being a film adaptation, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. It is itself an adaptation of Williams’ 1952 short story, ‘Three Players of a Summer’s Game’. The three-act play concerns itself with the network of dynamics existing within a family in Mississippi, USA and wraps in themes of sexual infatuation, family tension and greed.
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
“Afterwards I lay on my side with A Critique of Postcolonial Reason propped half-open on the pillow beside me…”
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason is one of the most highly prescribed texts of literary theory. It comes from the same incredibly influential essayist behind ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, a prominent text in postcolonial studies. In this text, Spivak investigates not only the continuing and pervasive western ideology of the “oriental”, but builds into it study issues of gender theory and the influence of class dynamics.
Emma by Jane Austen
“For some reason my mother left a small leather-bound copy of the New Testament on the bookshelf in my room, sandwiched between Emma and an anthology of early American writing…”
Jane Austen’s Emma appears in both Conversations with Friends and Normal People. In a recent interview with City Arts & Lectures in New York, Rooney describes this novel as one of her all-time favourites. Emma follows the titular character’s endeavours to make successful relationships for her neighbours, without wanting to settle or engage in the marriage market herself. This novel belongs to the genre of nineteenth century romance novels that Rooney’s own have been compared to, those that concern the petty though intriguing lives of the upper classes.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
“Nick had started rehearsing for a production of Hamlet, and after work on Tuesdays and Fridays he came to stay in the apartment”
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is among the most famous plays in the English language. The play is centuries-old yet deals with similar themes which pervade contemporary Rooney’s distinctly millennial texts such as social decay, sexual promiscuity and hidden illnesses.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
“My mother had bought me a bar of chocolate from the vending machine and I sat there tapping my pen against the front cover of Middlemarch”.
Like Emma, Middlemarch is one of the Victorian novels that appear so similar to Rooney’s. Its narrator digs deep into the psychologies and personal connections of those living in a provincial English village, again studying class, gender and their relationship to a social economy. It is from another of Eliot’s novels, Daniel Deronda, that Rooney takes the epigraph for her second novel.
IN NORMAL PEOPLE
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, otherwise known as the Manifesto of the Communist Party.
“He told her she should try reading The Communist Manifesto, he thought she would like it, and he offered to write down the title for her so she wouldn’t forget”
Marx and Engels’ polemic is the foundational text of communist theory. It famously discusses the class struggles that are “the history of all hitherto existing society,” and the power dynamic that exists between the bourgeois and the proletariat. Rooney’s texts are both peppered with references to the text and communist ideologies, with many of her characters viewing the world via a Marxist framework.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
“He followed her into the study last week while she was looking for a copy of The Fire Next Time to lend him…”
The works of James Baldwin are vaguely referenced through both Normal People and Conversations with Friends, although this is the only one specifically mentioned by name. The Fire Next Time contains two essays published originally in The Progressive and The New Yorker respectively in the early 1960s. In them, Baldwin discusses the role of race in America, and its relationship with faith, specifically Christianity and Islam.
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
“He could fuck some weird-looking girls who turn out to be bisexual. I’ve read The Golden Notebook, he could tell them. It’s true, he has read it.”
One of the major themes of The Golden Notebook is the contempt for persisting social orders. The text is rebellious and intellectual and in it Lessing is influenced by Marxist theory and the women’s liberation movements. This perhaps explains Connell’s idea of using his having read it to impress university peers. It follows the life of writer Anna Wulf, who tries to write her life in five notebooks discussing social degeneration and mental breakdown.
Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
“Before term ended he had to give a class presentation on Le Morte d’Arthur, and while he spoke his hands were shaking and he couldn’t look up from his printouts to see if anyone was actually listening to him”
Le Morte d’Arthur is a fifteenth century text of different existing stories stitched together by Thomas Malory into a single narrative. It follows the famous Knights of the Roundtable, King Arthur, Guinivere and the quest for the Holy Grail. It is a story of romance, trickery, sin and corruption. The text is used by Rooney more to demonstrate Connell’s intellectual prowess than to give the reader a glimpse into the literary tastes of the characters. I wouldn’t recommend it for light reading.
