For a while after finishing this novel, I couldn't decide if I liked it or not. There were absolutely a lot of great moments in the story that touched me, but some settings and conflicts still seemed to flow on the surface of the real world. What the author addressed as "normal people" seemed more like a group of "normal privileged young people." I never once thought that the severity level of people's problems differed by their social class. A rich guy's problem couldn't be compared to a poor one's only because no pain and sorrow of any two individuals could be compared. Still, when these Irish elites talked about international politics and wars in Trinity, or when they regarded opinions and knowledge as a resource to show off (for most of them), a personality, an interest (for the protagonist, Marianne), I was pushed out of the story for a moment, feeling weirdly uncomfortable. Those faraway sufferings of people from the other end of the world became symbolic in these young people's lives. The experience was no longer a solid reaction to life but some qualification to look serious, some abstract reflection on self-demonstration.

A similar symbolization even happened in the story's plot when it came to Marianna's background trauma. Being rich and broken, intelligent and lonely, worthy loving though suffering family violence, it seemed Marianna had to own all these features to win herself a strong personality to carry the story. A typical "upper-class family life could be much more unhealthy" tragedy. In fact, I was more moved by Connell's melancholy, even though he had less reason to suffer. Marianna and Connell always kept a beautiful symmetry in the story: when he was the school star, she was a misfit; when he couldn't fit in Trinity, she gained a reputation; when he found a normal girlfriend to maintain a healthy relationship, she found a jerk to degrade herself; when he fell into the depression for old friend's death, she even trapped herself in a sort of self-punishment. But their development and self-reflection in the story were not equally arranged since the college part. Connell's struggles were presented in detail and processed with motivated plots and twists; in some parts, we were allowed to sympathize with him, and in others, we were allowed to hate him. He was a convincible and vivid character to bring out the reader's complex feelings. But as for Marianna, she was always waiting there. All her flaws were presented in a victim's way -- compared to Connell, all her mistakes and weakness were more reasonable and forgivable in a reader's moral experience (though in the real world, it might be the opposite). It made the climax and resolution look like an artificial conclusion made by the author.

"How strange to feel herself so completely under the control of another person, but also how ordinary. No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not." When the story reached Marianne's thoughts in the end, I found these words were beautifully and artificially written at the same time. Though the conclusion was so sincere that one could copy it as a motto, the resolution of Marianna's peace couldn't convince me at all. At the climax, when her brother hurt her, she also passively waited for Connell to lead the issue. That fitted her character and her self-denying inclination. But in the storyline, there was not enough motivation and evidence for her to bring up those life philosophies or make a huge decision.

But after all, didn't Rooney know the inclination of symbolization in her story? Hadn't she realized her protagonist was somehow floating on the lightest layer of life? Part of me thinks she did know. And part of me even echoes with that lightest layer. The generation she wrote about was protected so well that they could only take all these experiences as symbols for positive or negative usages for a certain period in their life. It doesn't mean the suffering was not actual. Sometimes being trapped in the bubble for too long and seeing more and more conflicts outside through a twisted lens, this generation might even go through more intolerable fear than those who could indeed suffer it. We fear we can't participate. We fear we will eventually have to participate. We fear we weren't and never would be prepared for this world. From this angle, the novel did reveal some real confusion, which was not wholly satisfying but challenging enough.

As for a love story, Rooney did a great job of creating intimacy between protagonists. And she was SO good at sex sceneries. The teenage part was the best for me throughout the whole book. Their chemistry and struggle could be regarded as a tiny sketch of human weakness confronting society. I especially like how the author arranged twists to balance their relationship between sealing and breaking, privacy and publicity. And they reminded me of the reason why the love theme is too cheap to be written and too expensive to be well-written nowadays. In the crowds, we lose the self; in the solitude, we scatter the self. Only through love, a bridge to connect with another individual, are we able to locate the self.

There's no more need to praise her clean, neat, and precise language. She was talented in pace and rhythm. I carefully examined her sentence length and vocabulary usage. She had a style I wanted to learn from.

2023.1.3