Sally Rooney’s first novel, Conversations With Friends, begins with the lacklustre, “Bobby and I first met Melissa at a poetry night in town, where we were performing together.” On a sentence level, this feels less like the mental foreplay one would expect, and more of a slight graze of the cheek. But nobody can argue the cultural impact that Rooney has had on the reading world. She is the perfect prodigy—the young starling making waves.
What truly propelled Sally Rooney to stardom was her 2018 novel, Normal People, following two students as they navigate class differences while falling in and out of love. Speaking to the Louisiana Channel, Rooney says, “The way that I think about the world we live in is probably through, mostly through a sort of Marxist framework.” Though, the reality of the novel is much less poignant. Marianne and Connell are generally flat, often lacking emotional depth. This isn’t helped by the author’s stilted writing style:
“He feels his ears get hot.”
What Sally Rooney is most known for is her absence of quotation marks. In an interview with Stet Mag she says, “I can’t remember ever really using quotation marks – I don’t see any need for them, and I don’t understand the function they perform in a novel, marking off some particular pieces of the text as quotations. I mean, it’s a novel written in the first person, isn’t it all a quotation?”
She explicitly expresses her confusion as to the purpose of quotation marks, but surely every self-respecting writer understands you must know the rules to break them? This interview took place six years ago, but upon a preview of her upcoming novel, Intermezzo, I am inclined to believe her views are unchanged. Though this could simply be a case of playing into her trademark. I am still overwhelmed with surprise at the influence Sally has had on both reader and the genre itself—if it can be defined. Sally Rooney is the Taylor Swift of the literary world. Her loyal fans will devour all she endorses, releases, and proclaims. And like Taylor, she is also terribly singular in her work. There are many albums / books, and even when the titles change, the foundations bear the same chipped paint.
Just today, Faber & Faber announced their partnering with various bookshops as part of Rooney’s latest launch. There are tote bags, customisable dust-jackets, stickers, and more. Roo-mania is gearing up to take over the literary scene three years after her last novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, which also has an underwhelming first line:
“A woman sat in a hotel bar, watching the door.”
Sally Rooney writes about people who find it difficult to communicate, but the ultimate irony is that she herself doesn’t communicate this well. Her writing is starkly devoid of colour, but the enduring love with which society feeds itself on seems to revel in it. Rooney’s he-said-she-said penmanship is reminiscent of children in a playground. However, I do acknowledge that I am perhaps missing the intricacies of Irish culture. Though, this is not something I have seen in the various discussions had around Rooney, so I am inclined to believe this is unique to the author.
It is my conclusion that a great part of Sally Rooney’s popularity is down to marketing. The banality of her writing genuinely confounds me to a worrying degree, and I am someone who can usually see the appeal in even the most torrid of people. As one Goodreads reviewer put it, Rooney’s characters are “meant to be ‘normal young cool people’”, but instead of indulging in a 3D puzzle, I am staring at a flat cardboard box. My burning question is: does an editor even touch her books at all? Ultimately, Sally Rooney carves watered-down versions of Jude the Obscure for the iPhone generation out of Balsa wood.
Courtenay's Corner 