A friend told me she couldn’t stop thinking about Normal People (Knopf Canada) by Sally Rooney. Another friend said Rooney writes some of the most intimate sex scenes she’s read. The New Republic said her “paragraphs are built for the Instagram age.” The Guardian said it’s a “future classic.” And many have called Sally Rooney the first Great Millennial Author. As a fellow millennial I was curious to read the first great author of my generation. The novel follows two characters, Marianne and Connell, from their last year of high school to the end of university. Their relationship weaves between being friends and lovers tangled in social and economic tensions: Marianne lives in the white mansion and Connell’s mother is the cleaner of the white mansion; Marianne’s family is abusive and Connell’s mother is loving; Connell is the popular kid in high school and Marianne is the outsider; Marianne is popular in university and Connell struggles to make friends. Yet they are drawn to each other, connected by their interest and exploration of what it is to be a “normal person.” Rooney writes minute details of the characters’ interaction, at times too much, and other times too sparsely. The writing is cool and nonchalant, like the millennial attitude of “it doesn’t really matter, but it does matter, but I’m not going to show you it matters, and I’ll just go with the flow.” I wanted to like the book because my friends said it was good, because the reviewers said it was good. And after reading about Sally Rooney herself, I wanted to like the book. I felt like I was missing something, that I didn’t get the book. But maybe I’m just not a “normal person.”