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Goodreads Challenge

 For the Goodreads challenge, I decided to read the novel Normal People by Salley Rooney. I had seen the show and remembered social media being a relatively prevalent catalyst in it, and after some research found it was the same in the novel. The novel specifically utilizes Skype (though not really social media, still a form of technological communication) and Facebook. The novel takes place in Ireland from about 2011-2015, so I was surprised that only Facebook was used, but concluded it was a specific choice made by the author. I believe that only using Facebook ensures that the intimacy between the characters is felt deeply by the reader- it is not lost to the noise of Instagram and Twitter. 

There are a few instances throughout the course of the novel where Facebook is utilized. One of the most powerful instances is during the death of Marianne's (one of the two protagonists) friend Rob. Marianne finds it absolutely disturbing how people use his personal Facebook page as a forum for public grief. She grapples with how to interact with these posts- especially the posts of people who barely knew him. She describes these posts as "performative." This is something I have experienced myself and I can relate to that discomfort. Is social media a place to display your grief? Part of me understands reaching out to a community experiencing the same grief as you, but another part of me understands Marianne's feeling of it being performative. It feels gross to see people hopping on a grief train for attention.

The novel also uses the concept of lurking on Facebook. The novel focuses on Marianne and Connel's on again/off again love story, from high school into adulthood. Connel, the other protagonist, lurks on Marianne's Facebook and finds her fitting in at college. She seems happy and popular, something very different from her life in high school where she had few friends and was isolated. Connel, on the other hand, was popular a well-liked, to the point that he was embarrassed for anyone to know about the two of them. His lurking reflects the difference in appearance and reality. Although Marianne looks happy on social media, she still battles depression and feelings of self-hatred, no matter what the photos on Facebook suggest. 

Overall, I think Rooney uses social media to enforce themes of reality versus appearance, implying that what you see on social media is not always what is happening in reality. It is an imperfect mirror of our lives and shouldn't be taken at face value. 

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