Connell meets Marianne at her house while picking up his mother Lorraine from her housekeeping job.

Marianne and Connell become secret lovers, with Connell refusing to acknowledge her publicly among his friends.

A drunk older man gropes Marianne at a nightclub; Connell defends her and drives her home.

Marianne confesses her dead father used to hit her and her mother; Connell tells her he loves her.

Connell impulsively decides to take Rachel Moran to the Debs Ball rather than Marianne.

Marianne quits school and refuses all of Connell's calls after learning about his Debs Ball plans.

Connell arrives at a Trinity College party and discovers that Marianne is dating a popular boy named Gareth.

Marianne and Connell have sex again for the first time since high school, the morning after a house party.

Connell tells Marianne he is going home for the summer; she misreads this as a breakup and turns cold.

Connell arrives drunk and bloodied at Marianne's apartment after a mugging and reveals he has a new girlfriend.

Marianne tears off bondage restraints during a photoshoot and walks out on her Swedish boyfriend Lukas for good.

Connell seeks help at a campus mental health facility after his friend Rob's suicide drives him into depression.

During sex, Marianne asks Connell to hit her; he refuses, and she flees his house in shame.

Alan breaks Marianne's nose; Connell drives to her house, confronts Alan, and takes Marianne safely away.

Connell announces he has been accepted to an MFA program in New York; Marianne encourages him to go.

The main plot follows Connell and Marianne from their first charged conversation at her family home through a secret high school romance that Connell refuses to acknowledge publicly. His decision to take another girl to the Debs Ball fractures their bond, and when they reunite at Trinity College, their social positions are sharply reversed. They are drawn back together despite new obstacles, failed relationships, and the damage caused by Connell's inability to ask for help over a summer he cannot afford. Marianne's dangerous involvements with Jamie and Lukas mirror the abuse she endured at home, while Connell spirals into depression after a friend's suicide. A violent confrontation with Marianne's brother Alan finally brings the two of them together openly and without shame. The novel closes with Connell accepted to a New York MFA program and Marianne — newly secure in herself — encouraging him to go.

The headline events of Connell and Marianne's relationship from first meeting to final farewell.

Lorraine tells Connell he should be nicer to Marianne, calling her a very sensitive person.

Marianne watches Connell score a goal at a school soccer game and thinks about their growing closeness.

Connell and Marianne browse the Trinity College website together; she tells him he should study English.

Rachel Moran shows open hostility toward Marianne at the nightclub event for selling Debs Ball tickets.

Lorraine discovers Connell and Marianne in bed together the morning after the nightclub and teases him about it.

At the Debs Ball, Connell's friend Eric reveals that his secret relationship with Marianne was already common knowledge.

Marianne overhears through Alan that Connell received a perfect score on his final school exams.

Connell and Marianne banter easily at the Trinity party after she is introduced to him as Gareth's girlfriend.

Peggy directly asks Marianne and Connell if they are a couple and then proposes a threesome.

Marianne runs into Connell and Lorraine at a Carricklea supermarket; he offers to drive her home.

Connell offers to attend Marianne's father's anniversary mass with her, and they tentatively rebuild their friendship.

Connell wins a Trinity scholarship; Marianne also wins one but values it emotionally rather than financially.

Jamie gets drunk at dinner in Trieste and smashes a champagne glass on the kitchen floor; Connell intervenes.

Connell and Marianne attend a Dublin street protest supporting Gaza and debate the value of demonstration.

Connell and Marianne move in together in Dublin; Marianne feels like an ordinary, invisible person for the first time.

These events trace the smaller yet significant beats of Connell and Marianne's story, from early social dynamics in Carricklea to the rhythms of college life in Dublin. Lorraine's early empathy for Marianne and Rachel's hostility at the nightclub establish the social pressures that make Connell's cowardice all the more damaging. Their awkward but easy reconnection at the Trinity party, along with provocations from mutual friends like Peggy, shows how their bond persists despite repeated estrangements and new partners. A chance supermarket encounter draws them back into each other's orbit after their first proper breakup, and a disastrous dinner in Trieste forces them to reckon with how mismatched their respective worlds have become. Winning scholarships and attending a street protest together mark the growth of their shared moral conscience and mutual understanding of an unjust world. Finally moving in together in Dublin gives both characters — for the first time — an uncomplicated sense of ordinary belonging.

The quieter but essential moments that sustain and complicate Connell and Marianne's bond across years.

Connell admits to Marianne that their economics teacher's flirtation makes him uncomfortable — something he would never tell his friends.

Marianne and Connell share their first kiss after weeks of exchanging books and conversation.

Connell panics when Eric questions him at school about Marianne and locks himself in the bathroom.

Connell visits his grandmother in hospital and she resents him for resembling his absent father.

Connell realizes at the Debs Ball that his effort to keep his relationship with Marianne secret was pointless.

Connell refuses Marianne's drunken sexual proposition at a house party, telling her she is too drunk.

Marianne confesses to Connell that her own family does not like her, during a conversation about children.

Connell reveals he could not afford Dublin over the summer and was too ashamed to ask Marianne if he could stay.

Marianne confesses to Connell that her boyfriend Jamie is a sexual dominant and that she is his submissive.

Connell tells Marianne that their old economics teacher Paula Neary propositioned him drunkenly over the summer.

Connell and Marianne spend the night together in Trieste after Jamie's outburst but only kiss, going no further.

Helen confronts Connell about his long embrace with Marianne at Rob's funeral; the two break up shortly after.

Connell's first short story is published anonymously in the Trinity literary magazine, leaving him elated and embarrassed.

Eric apologizes to Marianne for the way he and his friends treated her during high school.

Lorraine tells Connell he is the love of her life when he asks if she regrets having him as a teenager.

This pool traces the revelations and turning points that fundamentally reshape both characters across the novel's span. From their very first honest exchange about a predatory teacher to their first kiss, early intimacy forces Connell and Marianne to confront parts of themselves they usually suppress. Connell's pattern of fear around appearances — panicking in a school bathroom, refusing to ask Marianne for financial help — costs them both repeatedly and forms a throughline of quiet self-betrayal. Conversations in which they finally speak honestly about abusive relationships, broken families, and personal shame pull them closer even when circumstance keeps them apart. The losses and endings that define their later years — Rob's suicide, the collapse of Connell's relationship with Helen — leave them raw and exposed in ways that only each other can absorb. By the novel's close, small acts of honesty from the people around them, including Lorraine's confession and Eric's long-overdue apology, confirm that their world has quietly but permanently changed.

The confessions, discoveries, and internal shifts that quietly determine who Connell and Marianne become.