Sally Rooney's strengths and weakness as a novelist

Sally Rooney's novel Normal People (2018) keeps moving along in its fashion as we follow the ups and downs of the relationship between the two young protagonists, Marianne and Connell, as they move from h.s. through college, grad school, each of them maturing, moving on to different partners but constantly drawn back to each other - and much analysis as they discuss every facet of their feelings, emotions, guilt, regret. We see Connell become much more mature and sophisticated as he moves on through college, and we Marianne become much more self-assured, moving from the social outcast to the center of attention and an object of fascination and desire. By about the the half-way point she w/ the completely wrong guy for her, the odious Jamie, rich brat and violent as well, while Connell is with a nice, sweet, devoted medical student, Helen, who seems unfortunately the wrong one for him - he's always going to be drawn toward the more dramatic and volatile Marianne. And so it goes; Rooney is unquestionably a great writer when it comes to exploring the nuances of developing and devolving relationships among young people, her peers it seems - but she's not as strong on nor as interested in plot development. It's as if her novels are at a constant simmer but they never come to a boil - and at some point we yearn for something dramatic, or even melodramatic, to break the spell. (Noting a mistake in yesterday's post: M and C are not living together in their first year in college; they each have their own place of abode, at least for the record.)