I read Sally Rooney’s Normal People, her second novel, after trying to make it through her first and feeling bad that I simply could not. Normal People, however, was a walk in the park. Who doesn’t love a messy love story about class divides, Ireland, and sex? Nothing about the book screamed “prestige television” to me, but I stand corrected. Hulu’s adaptation of Normal People is coming to streaming services on April 29, and after watching the trailer, I feel like it would be nice if Hulu did me a solid and sped up its release date to right about now.
Connell (Paul Mescal) and Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) have a complicated relationship: she’s rich, and his mother cleans her house. This class divide creates enough drama to drive the story; Marianne and Connell’s forbidden love pushes them to bone on the low and is strong enough to follow them both to Trinity College in Dublin, where the class issues that plagued them at home only intensify. Surely there are more pressing matters outside of the fucking in this trailer, but I’m very sorry, all I see before me are two attractive people with skin like fresh cream licking each other’s bodies and panting in the semi-dark.The book itself was relatively horny, but in a way that was not disgusting and John Updike-esque, but natural, and sort of erotic. Writing about sex is hard and making that sex feel actually sexy and not gross, even more so. Rooney, bless her, succeeded, and it looks like the television adaptation will convey the same urgency and sadness through the characters’ sexual congress. Spring, or something like it, is coming.