I really enjoyed this story, about two teens growing into themselves and then through their time in college. I was concurrently reading a Tana French mystery which also takes place in Dublin. I confused myself a bit and had to look at all of these places on a map to try and picture where all the different places are - especially Trinity College and then the different parts of Ireland. Much like America, the Irish can tell where people are from in Ireland because of their accents. It's like the "Ya, sure, you betcha" that sticks out if you're a Minnesotan. This definitely comes into play in later parts of the book when the two are in college.
First, the two friends have a different relationship from what most people would deem as normal - Connell and Marianne ignore each other at school but are definite best buddies outside of school. They have a romantic relationship. Marianne is convinced that Connell would be embarrassed that he's with Marianne. He eventually asks a different girl to a dance and breaks Marianne's heart.
Then they go to college.
It turns into the opposite - Marianne is the popular one and Connell is not. She pulls him into her circle and she has some asshole friends (which eventually she figures out in the last few pages of the book, because of course when you're a teenager you don't know you have asshole friends). They're together off and on. They each have different lovers and date other people.
One thing that I think irritated me the most was that Marianne's character wasn't as well developed as Connell's character. I kept wanting to know WHY she was the way she was and HOW she got to be the way she is. The little bits of background stories basically told nothing - only that her family wasn't that great. Finally towards the end of the book we got more information but yet that didn't make up for all the lost information in the beginning. Marianne comes from a rich and wealthy family where she fits in better at Trinity College. I think the readers needed MORE information - and more insight into what the characters were thinking and why. Connell isn't exactly a dummy but he is a young male which means that he thinks a heck of a lot more with his penis than his brain. In the book, he thinks more with his brain than his penis - and Marianne thinks more sexually than what most people would think. Is this wrong or bad? Nope, absolutely not! But it seems that Marianne's character development is really poor and some background stories may have been added as an afterthought instead of being included in backstory to help the reader understand Marianne's thoughts along the way. This isn't something that totally detracted from the story, just an observation.
To note Marianne has an abusive relationship towards the end and this is where the reader gets more background information. I also enjoyed reading about Connell's mother and her background - I just wish that Rooney would have written more background information about Marianne's parents and family to round out her character.
Rooney seemed to give up the information about Connell without a care - his story seemed to pour out but Marianne's seemed a bit harder to write, possibly? I'm not sure. Both characters had their flaws which make them more human and relatable.
I really enjoyed Marianne's realization of who her friends were/are at the end of the novel when she's speaking with a friend that moved away. The friend she was speaking with said something that suddenly made something in Marianne's head click - it was like a switch flipped and she figured out why she was miserable or why her friends seemed not to be her friends. That really made Marianne's character grow and mature - but I wished that realization had come a bit sooner in the book and maybe had a different outcome at the end? I'm not sure how that might play out.
If you're interested in a coming-of-age book that takes place NOT in the USA, and has a slight Romeo/Juliet feel, this is probably the book for you. Overall I give it 4 stars, but just wished that Marianne's character was a little more developed and had more information before the last quarter of the book. It was like reliving high school and my first year of college all over again - to a certain extent! HA!
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