Despite the relatable story and timeless genre, Hulu’s “Normal People” was never going to be an easy book-to-screen adaptation.
Take Sally Rooney’s first chapter: It’s clear that Marianne and Connell, two Irish students about to be swept into a decade-long romance, are attracted to one another, but the shy young man’s disposition and the garish young woman’s teasing are framed by thoughts, not dialogue or actions.Readers only know Marianne’s a social outcast because of Connell’s interior monologue, and they only know he’s nonetheless attracted to her because of an admission — “He feels his ears get hot” — that an actor can’t easily trigger.“‘Normal People,’ both the book and the TV show, are about that feeling of a gulf between the inner self and the outer self — between the private individual and the social world,” Rooney said in an interview with IndieWire.
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