If you liked
Books like Normal People
by Sally Rooney
Normal People is Sally Rooney's second novel and the one that turned literary fiction into something a generation of readers actually argued about. Connell and Marianne, the on-again-off-again rhythm, the class anxiety that never gets named directly, the dialogue without quotation marks — that whole package made readers either obsess or reject it, and the obsessors needed more. Here are the read-alikes our editors keep handing over.
The shortlist
What to read next
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Storeby James McBride
“The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride 2023 review. A 1972 skeleton found at the bottom of a Pottstown, Pennsylvania well sends the novel back to a 1930s neighborhood where Black, Jewish, and immigrant families lived alongside each other. The most important American novel of 2023.”
Klara and the Sunby Kazuo Ishiguro
“Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro 2021 review. Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches the children passing by the storefront and waits to be chosen. Late-career Ishiguro at his most patient and most strange.”
Jamesby Percival Everett
“James by Percival Everett 2024 review. A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved man Jim, in his own voice. The most important American novel of 2024 and the right Everett entry point.”
The Goldfinchby Donna Tartt
“The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 2013 review. Theo Decker, thirteen, survives a Metropolitan Museum bombing that kills his mother and ends up with a stolen painting that defines the next decade of his life. Pulitzer Prize 2014.”
Pachinkoby Min Jin Lee
“Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 2017 review. Four generations of a Korean family in twentieth-century Japan, beginning with Sunja's pregnancy by a married Korean gangster in 1933 Busan. The Apple TV+ adaptation source and one of the canonical contemporary Korean-American literary novels.”
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugoby Taylor Jenkins Reid
“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid 2017 review. An aging Hollywood icon agrees to tell the true story of her career and her seven marriages, but only to an unknown journalist. The TikTok-era literary fiction novel that defined contemporary Hollywood-memoir-fiction.”
FAQ
Common questions about Normal People read-alikes
- What is the closest match for Normal People?
- Klara and the Sun. Both books are quiet at the sentence level, devastating at the structural level, and built around two people whose relationship the reader watches the way Rooney makes you watch Connell and Marianne. Ishiguro's narrator is an AI, which is the only thing that does not map.
- I want more Sally Rooney specifically.
- Conversations with Friends (her debut, more diffuse), Beautiful World, Where Are You (her third, with more philosophy), and Intermezzo (her newest, with a chess subplot) are all written in her voice. None are reviewed here yet, but any library has them.
- I want the same kind of "small lives, big feelings" novel.
- The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is the closest American equivalent — same patient prose, same focus on small-town interiors, same emotional payoff. James is shorter but does similar work with a smaller cast.
- I want a book that hurts the same way.
- The Goldfinch is the maximalist version of what Rooney does in miniature. Pachinko is the multi-generational version. Both will take a couple of weeks. Worth it.
The original