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Excellent
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Normal People: A Novel Audiobook by Sally Rooney— narrated by Aoife McMahon
A quietly devastating portrait of two young people who keep finding and losing each other from high school through university, told in prose so precise it feels like eavesdropping on the inside of a relationship. Spare, intimate, unforgettable.
Why the audiobook wins
Aoife McMahon narrates Normal People in a plain, unforced Irish accent that matches Rooney's prose almost eerily well, since both are built on saying less than the moment holds. McMahon doesn't perform Connell and Marianne's silences so much as sit inside them, and that restraint is exactly what this novel needs read aloud, letting the misreadings between two people who love each other land without a narrator underlining them for you.
This is an intimate, interior book, and audio suits it in a way that's almost uncomfortable in the best sense, since McMahon's voice puts you inside a relationship's private language rather than observing it from outside. It's the kind of listen that rewards a quiet house or a solitary walk, where you're not fighting the book for your attention.
Normal People won the Costa Book Award for Best Novel and was a Booker Prize longlist pick, and McMahon's recording has become the way a lot of readers first meet Connell and Marianne. A relatively compact listen, and one credit gets you the whole ache of it.
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Audiobook questions
- Who narrates the Normal People: A Novel audiobook?
- Aoife McMahon narrates the audiobook edition of Normal People: A Novel.
- Is the Normal People: A Novel audiobook worth listening to?
- We scored Normal People: A Novel 4.3 out of 5. Aoife McMahon narrates Normal People in a plain, unforced Irish accent that matches Rooney's prose almost eerily well, since both are built on saying less than the moment holds. McMahon doesn't perform Connell and Marianne's silences so much as sit inside them, and that…
- Can I listen to Normal People: A Novel free with an Audible trial?
- Eligible new Audible members can use a free-trial credit to listen in the Audible app. Eligibility and current offer terms are set by Audible.
