Books like Normal People
What should you read after Sally Rooney’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Sally Rooney
- 2018
- 273 pages
- Literary fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Normal People
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchConversations with Friends
Sally Rooney
Rooney's first, and the nearest thing to more of the same: four people, one affair, and dialogue that hurts because nobody will say the true thing.
- Sparse, precise prose
- Everything left unsaid
- Class and power
- Messier, less resolved ending
Best for two people over yearsOne Day
David Nicholls
Twenty years of Emma and Dexter, visited on one date a year — the same structure of near-misses, warmer and much more willing to be funny.
- Two people over years
- Class and power
- Short and fast
- Sentimental where Rooney is cool
Best for sparse, precise proseExciting Times
Naoise Dolan
An Irish woman teaching English in Hong Kong triangulates between money and affection, in sentences as dry and exactly weighted as Rooney's best ones.
- Sparse, precise prose
- Class and power
- Interior loneliness
- Colder and more ironic throughout
Great matchTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin
Two people who keep almost getting it right across thirty years, except the thing standing between them is a company rather than a bedroom.
- Two people over years
- Everything left unsaid
- Interior loneliness
- Longer, with an ensemble
Great matchCleopatra and Frankenstein
Coco Mellors
A marriage entered far too quickly in New York, told in short chapters by everyone standing around it — modern, sharp, and very good on damage.
- Short and fast
- Two people over years
- Class and power
- Ensemble of side narrators
Worth a look — with a warningA Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara
If the loneliness underneath Connell was the part that stayed with you, Yanagihara goes to that same place and does not come back out.
- Interior loneliness
- Two people over years
- Everything left unsaid
- 720 pages with no lightness
What should you read after Normal People?
Normal People by Sally Rooney works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney — rooney's first, and the nearest thing to more of the same: four people, one affair, and dialogue that hurts because nobody will say the true thing.
If what stayed with you was two people over years, read One Day by David Nicholls instead: twenty years of Emma and Dexter, visited on one date a year — the same structure of near-misses, warmer and much more willing to be funny. Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan is the other strong option — an Irish woman teaching English in Hong Kong triangulates between money and affection, in sentences as dry and exactly weighted as Rooney's best ones.
Common questions
- What should you read after Normal People?
- Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, One Day by David Nicholls, Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan are the closest matches. Which fits best depends on what you loved about Normal People: two people over years, sparse, precise prose, class and power, everything left unsaid.
- What is the best book like Normal People?
- Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney is the strongest overall match. Rooney's first, and the nearest thing to more of the same: four people, one affair, and dialogue that hurts because nobody will say the true thing.
- What are books similar to Normal People by Sally Rooney?
- Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, One Day by David Nicholls, Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Each one matches a different part of Normal People rather than just its genre.
- Is Conversations with Friends worth reading after Normal People?
- Yes — readers who loved Normal People tend to land well with it: the identical voice and rhythm; emails and messages as text; class watched very closely. One thing to know going in: messier, less resolved ending.
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