tbr

Did this book win the 2020 Tournament of Books... as a joke?  Winning was the reason I grudgingly read this. The other books had more there there.  My bookdar could tell... this just didn't sound like it was for me.  Boring people, boring story, boring sentences.  The book is called 'Normal People' after all.  I can see what this is trying to say, but I just don't care about this book.    I just wouldn't mind a book having more substance than a very insular look at a relationship. It seems to have some sort of connection to 19th century novels... maybe haven't read enough of those to figure it out... Written differently, I think I would have cared much more, I understand Marianne at least. And I think Marianne and Connell deserved a better book.  Everything is so self-centered on Marianne and Connell though.  Marianne is even called "self-centered" while talking about Israel, which... I don't think is why she is "self-centered"... but the book itself certainly makes her that way.  Even if the book has to be about the mundane - the sentences could be more interesting?  Or is that the point? Maybe I like purple prose, especially when I'm otherwise uninterested.  Even the cover is boring.  Where is the imagery of the two plants from the end?  If this isn't the first book taken out of the running of the Tournament of Champions in October, I will be disappointed.   My least favorite of the field for 2020 that I read of eleven, and my least favorite of the overall winners (and second-place books!)