Hulu's new show 'Normal People' is based on Sally Rooney's novel of the same name. Here's how the series differs from the book.
Every product on this page was chosen by a Harper's BAZAAR editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.The fantastic new series makes a few tweaks to its source material.When it was published in 2018, Sally Rooney’swas everywhere: on Instagram, on the subway, in airports, and on coffee shop corners.
Ultimately, though, the series really works because of Daisy Edgar-Jones’s and Paul Mescal’s respective breakout performances as Marianne and Connell. Both Edgar-Jones and Mescal can communicate an entire world of emotion with the dart of an eye, and they are often called upon to do so. The result: a stunning visual treat that preserves the subtlety of its source material.
Perhaps in part because of this, the show also undercuts Marianne’s transformation from teenage pariah to popular university student. In the book, when Connell first encounters her at Trinity, he is amazed to find her in her element for the first time since he’s known her—but in the show, she is just as pretty in college as she was in high school, and just as bored with her newfound popularity as she was with her adolescent isolation.Marianne’s difficult home life figures heavily into the novel.
This streamlining extends even beyond romantic subplots. Connell’s nonconsensual encounter with Miss Neary, his former teacher, is reduced to an ambiguously discomfiting nightclub necking session; whereas in the book, Marianne says she’ll kill Miss Neary if she ever goes near Connell again, in the show, Marianne never even hears about it.
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