I am coming to the book version of Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ AFTER watching the Hulu series. I loved the show so much that I wanted to see if reading the book would ‘complete’ the experience. I wish I had gone in the other way around. The show was such a faithful adaptation that I felt I did not gain a lot more by reading the book. A lot of the situations and dialogues are exactly the same, and the show captures a lot of the nuisances of the characters to a T. Do I feel like I know the characters more than before? Sure, but I felt I already knew these characters well. There are some people who are watching the show and are saying they don’t get it – what’s the conflict? why can’t these two people be happy together, when obviously, they are so in love with each other. There is so much love there but for some reason, they just cannot connect, they cannot be truly themselves with each other, even if they can only be themselves when they are together. I think Rooney’s writing made me really understood that, but then again, the actors in the series were so good conveying them as well. It’s all good.