Normal People

I felt this book addressed some of the problems I had with Conversations With Friends; some of what mas missing from the latter, was present here, namely addressing gender power dynamics and adding a contrasting narrative voice.
Rooney somehow manages to communicate a very specific type of internal female voice that I haven't seen brought to life so vividly before.
I do feel like the only aspect of her writing that sits uncomfortably with me is that she writes as someone who hasn't moved through or transcended these experiences yet; she's still in them. The perspective is valuable and utterly absorbing, but I wanted the characters to grow beyond their experiences in a more profound way.
One niggle that persisted on from Conversations with Friends, is just an overwhelming vibe of middle class whiteness and fake-wokeness (the handling of class issues is kind of heavy-handed). There doesn't seem to be an authorial awareness of this either, nor the characters' inability to strive for anything other than a vaguely conservative BoBo mediocrity.