Normal People by Sally Rooney

This is a great book, long listed for the Booker Prize, and well worth searching out.  It does a very good job of conveying the way trauma ripples across a lifetime, engulfing others along the way.  The abuse of children is forever.  This is a gentle and well written reminder of that.
The book chronicles the relationship between two teenagers in Ireland in the early 2010s. Marianne is wealthy and despised, considered “an object of disgust” at school, where “people have said she doesn’t shave her legs or anything.” Connell is poor — his mother is a cleaner at Marianne’s house — but popular. They are both very bright, Marianne openly and Connell secretly, which explains part of the popularity gap between them.
The situation shifts when they go to University.  Marianne’s eccentricities and open brilliance, make her sought after and admired. Connell’s blue-collar reticence leaves him friendless and ignored.  They slowly and somewhat painfully end their way to an adult relationship that is both satisfying and surprising.