An audio book. Episodes are often separated by about 3 months, time intervals clearly stated.
Sligo, Ireland. Connel comes to collect his mother from Marianne's house where she works as a maid. Connel and Marianne are at school together and are both clever. He's popular, she isn't - she's a bit strange. She has crooked teeth and opinions vary as to whether she's pretty. Connel comes from a bad family (he doesn't know who his father is). Marian's dead father used to beat her and her mother.
Connel and Marianne start having sex together. She's a virgin and he hadn't enjoyed sex before. They keep their friendship secret. She's planning to do English at Trinity. He was going to do Law elsewhere. He changes to English at Trinity. He asks another girl out to the school ball. Marian doesn't go to school after that, and splits with Connel. Connel gets maximum marks in the final exams. Marian gets 590/600.
They meet again by chance at a Dublin party. Connel's shyness didn't matter back home - he was handsome and good at soccer. He has made few friends - he feels upper/lower and East-Ireland/West-Ireland bias. He returns home at the weekends to work in a garage. Marianne's boyfriend is on one of Connel's courses. He's quite well known. Marianne has a group of girlfriends too. She offers to introduce him to them.
He starts staying in her flat most nights. When he has to move out of his own accommodation he wants to ask to move in with her but she doesn't pick up the hint. In the end he returns home for the summer and she stays in Dublin, finding a new boyfriend within a fortnight (though later she says she would have welcomed Connel had she realised what he meant).
They still fall back on each other when in trouble. They discuss their sex lives. Why haven't they stuck together? He feels that being lower class, he wouldn't fit in with her high society friends. And his mother thinks he treated Marianne badly. Marianne doesn't want to seem dependent. But mostly they seem to lack a commitment to trying to make it work, to clarifying possible missunderstanding and apologising.
Marianne falls out with her siblings. Though she's steady with Jamie she's upset when Connel tells her he's in love with Helen, who he goes around Europe with, writting to Marianne as he goes. With Helen he feels normal. With Marianne he sometimes began seeing the world her way, as an outsider. Helen tries to be friendly with Marianne. When she mentions to Connel that Marianne seems to crave male attention he gently defends her.
Marianne says "I don't know why I can't be like a normal person - I can't make people love me." She breaks up with Jamie, which loses her some female friends. She goes to Sweden for a while, indulging in more self-denigration. Of men she thinks that "Their desire for domination looked like attraction"Her next boyfriend is Lucas - an artist. She thinks that his taste in art is good, but that he's not a good person. Not for the first time she falls into a relationship where (especially during sex) her partner tells her what a bad person she is.
Connell gets depressed after a friend from school kills himself. He fantasises about suicide. He goes to the student counselling service and gets put on meds. He and Marianne meet at the funeral. After 2 weeks, he and Helen break up. He and Marianne end up back in their home town for a while. She wants things to be like they used to be, but realises that though she hasn't changed, he has. They have sex. She asks him to hit her. He doesn't. He writes stories and is the editor of the college's literary magazine. He's offered an MFA place in NY. He wants her to go with him. She says he should go alone - "I'll always be here. You know that."
I'm underwhelmed. The descriptions of little student gatherings (posturing, teasing, assessing) are well done. The on/off nature of the relationship isn't always convincing.
If Rooney uses "nodding to himself", "she smiled to herself", etc, then I guess it must be ok.
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