Normale mensen van Sally Rooney is maandagavond (13 mei) verkozen tot Book of the Year op de British Book Award. Ze versloeg onder andere Becoming, de autobiografie van Michelle Obama, en Milkman van Anna Burns, dat vorig jaar de Man Booker won.
Rooney: "It’s an enormous privilege and an honour for me to receive the overall Book of the Year Award at the British Book Awards. I want to say thank you, specifically, because I feel I had an extraordinary lucky experience with this book. […] I’ve received such enormous support and generosity from my own publisher, Faber & Faber, of course, and also from the bookselling community generally, from libraries and librarians, and the community of people who love books. It has been a really privileged experience for me, and I do feel astonishingly lucky."
De jury-voorzitter Alice O'Keeffe zei dat ze twijfelden tussen Becoming en Normal People, maar ze vinden Rooney zo’n groot talent dat ze voor haar kozen.
O'Keeffe: “It was a really difficult decision and we went back and forth for a good while, but after much discussion we felt that Sally Rooney is such a major talent and that her ‘difficult second novel’ was just as impressive as her debut was astonishing. She has been described as a millennial writer with millennial concerns, but I know readers in their seventies who loved Normal People. The passion that came through on the grassroots for this book is really something.”
Eerder won Sally Rooney met Normale mensen al de Costa Novel Award en werd het boek verkozen to Waterstone’s Book of the Year.