The BBC’s latest drama, Conversations with Friends, was hailed as a massive failure by critics, saying it failed to recapture the magic of Sally Rooney’s first adaptation, Normal People.
Many also commented that she looked a lot like Normal People—perhaps more boring—with a slender brunette from the Irish countryside, characters who lost their virginity and traveled abroad, complicated relationships with red-haired single mothers, and the lead role studying English at Trinity College. Dublin.
And while the lead roles — Daisy Edgar Jones in Normal People and Alison Oliver in Conversations With Friends — could easily be mistaken for sisters, they also bear an eerie resemblance to Sally Rooney.
All three women are pale brunettes with similar features, shoulder-length hair and bangs.
Daisy Edgar Jones (right) in Normal People and Alison Oliver in Conversations with Friends – they can easily be mistaken for sisters, plus they have an odd resemblance to Sally Rooney (left)
All three women are pale brunettes with similar features, shoulder-length hair and bangs. Rooney on the left, Alison on the right.
In both books, Frances, the protagonist of Conversations with Friends, and Marianne, the protagonist of Normal People, are thin, dark, and attractive women.
Meanwhile, they’re also shy and introverted, but they’re also intellectually gifted, as is Sally, one of the youngest Costa Award winners ever.
In Normal People, Marianne is portrayed as a gifted and intelligent student who may one day become a writer herself.
In Conversations With Friends, Frances is a word poet performing with her friend Bobbi, and Sally was a passionate debater in college and won the European Debating Championship.
In Chats with Friends, the characters also leave Dublin for a group vacation to Europe, this time on a trip to Croatia.
In Normal People, the characters travel to Italy for several episodes where their friends, including Connell, go to Marianne’s home in Trieste.
In both series, the characters are depicted while studying English at Trinity College, Dublin, where Rooney completed his studies of English and American literature.
Rooney said that despite the similarities to the main characters, the books are not autobiographical and that when people do it, he finds it “funny”.
She told the Irish Times in 2017 that she was questioned “too much” about her own life’s repercussions in her story, including a radio host who asked her at 9 a.m. if she had ever been in a relationship. man. married.
‘I came to talk about my book and I get questions about my sex life. Very, very strange. So definitely on that front. But I think I made the mistake of saying “No” when I should have said “It’s none of your business,” he explained.
Normal People tells the story of Marianne Sheridan (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, right), a lonely man who has never kissed a child. The action begins in 2011 when she falls in love with Connell Waldron (Paul Mescal, left).
Intense: Daisy Edgar-Jones (left) and Paul Mescal (right) in the series that her characters fall in love with in the Sixth Form
However, she admits that parts of her life inspired her to write.
“Nothing is purely fictional.
“Frances moves in the same social circles that I moved into. He has the same education as me at Trinity, so it would be unfair for me to pretend that he is somewhat of the same cultural position as me and is not. Tell me about the way I wrote the book’
Sally also took much of her writing style from typing email as her characters do, and she had stories in both Frances’ Conversations with Friends and Connell’s Normal People that were accepted by literary magazines while in college. Like Rooney himself.
In both series, the characters are depicted studying English at Trinity College Dublin, where Rooney is studying English and American literature (pictured, Marianne at the university in Normal People)
In addition to playing Frances and Marianne, Normal People and Conversations with Friends feature a 20-year ensemble cast of above-average intellectual ability (left, Frances’ love interest and best friend Bobbi is a poet of words, while on the right, Connell writes short stories)
Normal People also takes place during the austerity years when Sally herself is in college.
“It would be very difficult for me to write about young people in Western Ireland leaving their homes to attend university, about the economic inequalities that arose at the time, such as the removal of protection from people at work…class history by going to university,” said Keeper †
The author was born and raised in the town of Castlebar with a population of around 10,000, where he still lives today.
In Normal People, this is fictionalized as Carricklea, whose protagonist Marianne can’t wait to escape and Rooney says she misses in her youth.
Source: Daily Mail
