Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have been astounded by some of the reviews I've seen of this book. The Guardian calls it "a future classic". It was long listed for the Man Booker. The only reason can be a great publicity push that has convinced people that Rooney is a genius. She's not. Basically the book is pages and pages and pages of two people who fall out over stupid stuff, get back together and have lots of sex, fall out, get other boyfriends/girlfriends, get depressed (an entire section of the book is dedicated to a deep depression partly brought on by the death of a character who is barely mentioned, yet we're supposed to believe that Connell is devastated by his death...and why is Marianne even at his funeral since everyone in high school treated her badly anyway?...She's there only so Connell can see her and pine for her). By 2/3 of the way through it felt like Groundhog Day. Most troubling is that the prose has no lyricism, no craft. Typical scenes go like this: Hello, says Marianne. Hello, says Connell. She put the kettle on to boil. So how are things, says Marianne. Fine, says Connell. She poured the hot water into the tea cups. That's not verbatim from the book but it's how a lot of space is used in the book. The book is about nothing more than high schoolers and then college students who are miserable by their own making. The characters are like stereotypes of Millennials who exist to be miserable and go to therapy instead of being real, complex Millennials. We are told constantly how smart Connell and Marianne are but neither of them appear to be smart. Rooney (or her editor) pepper throughout the book brief references to Syria and Proust and other political or literary mentions just so we might think there is something symbolic or profound happening here. There isn't. NORMAL PEOPLE is like reading a novel by Lena Dunham: pretentious and self indulgent. I hesitate to write such a bad review because I know that authors spend so long working on books but this one feels like a manipulative con job to me, and I find that offensive.