Image: Trinity College library by Guillaume Henrotte on Unsplash
Taking a look at the Normal People author’s work to date as Beautiful World, Where are You? hits the bookshelves.
This article contains spoilers.
‘Voice of a generation’ it’s a title sometimes thrown around in the creative world. A subjective categorisation of art, literature or music that critics and audiences believe reflects the times in which they appeared. F. Scot Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby works brilliantly as a piece of literature that contemplates the reality and disillusionment of the ‘American Dream’ themes that perhaps resonate with readers today as it did when first published. But it is also cursed to forever be intertwined with the period in which it was created (something beyond being just a contemporary novel of the period), propping up images of 1920s Jazz age aesthetics in the minds of people who may have never read the novel.
Irish author Sally Rooney, only a few short years into her writing career, has already become perhaps one of most notable figures in the literary world. Having just turned 30, she’s written two of some of the biggest best sellers in recent years, with her debut novel Conversations With Friends before following it up with Normal People. Since its publication, Normal People has become a staple on many young people’s bookshelves, thanks in no small part to last year’s hit TV adaptation. Given the amount of success she’s already achieved at such a young age, many publications have decided to label her along the lines of ‘the first great millennial writer’ or the ‘voice of a generation’, praised for an ability to write engaging coming-of-age stories stories in the era of social media.
But perhaps inevitably with such praise of her work also comes waves of criticism, ranging from fair critiques of her approach to storytelling to rather disingenuous opinion pieces. Rooney herself has admitted to feeling uncomfortable with her new found fame, telling The Guardian that she went as far as muting her own name on Twitter before ditching social media altogether.
I didn’t get around to reading her work until about the time when Normal People lit up the TV world last year. With only vague knowledge going in, I enjoyed both of her novels with the simple but yet endearing flow of her writing style put together with interesting dynamics between the characters making them real page turners. Aesthetically, Conversations With Friends and Normal People share very similar DNA. Both are set predominantly around Trinity College in the early to mid-2010s, most of her characters are very politically engaged with the world around them, Jane Austen’s Emma features at some point (Rooney must’ve gotten inspired somehow) and numerous name drops of novelists and thinkers you have to google to get the gist of what’s been talked about. But, I think with much discussion surrounding the release of her third novel Beautiful World Where Are You?, which is unsurprisingly expected to become one of the biggest if not the biggest best sellers of the year, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at Rooney’s literary journey and offer my two cents as to what I think ultimately makes her work stand out.
Going back to the beginning
Rooney was born in Castlebar, west of Ireland, her father a telephone engineer whilst her mother ran an art gallery, spending as much time in her youth learning of Marx and Engles as of Jesus Christ in the predominantly catholic nation. Ever academically capable but consistently disinterested in school, perhaps much like one of her future characters, she would spend much of her spare time reading. JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey as well as Jane Austen’s Emma having been particular favourites. It wouldn’t be until when she started university, managing to earn a place at Dublin’s prestigious Trinity College for English Literature, that Rooney would begin to really hone her craft writing short stories and poems for literary magazines. One piece included a short story that would later spawn into Normal People called At the Clinic, an interesting read featuring primitive versions of the main characters Marianne and Connell albeit with wildly different characteristics.
All the while, her ability to deeply engage with political and social thought would lead her to become one of the top champion debaters in Europe before becoming disillusioned with the idea of arguing in favour of topics she couldn’t agree with, “pretending, weekend after weekend, to be passionate about whichever side of the debate [she] happened to be on.” It would be whilst studying her master’s in American Literature that she started developing drafts of her first novel Conversations With Friends in between classes.
Rooney herself in the past has told interviewers that she has never really been able to write of “other worlds” outside of her own experiences, feeling more comfortable with a more analytical approach to writing saying that she, “really needs to have a strong sense of how people in [a] community behave, how do they speak? What are the kind of manners and social rules that dictate social interactions in that setting… I feel like I need to know something really well before I can pick up the kind of observations that interest me.” By looking further into her writing approach and correlating that with her stories the thing that is perhaps most interesting is how Rooney, instead of being driven necessarily by any overarching plot, has her stories predominantly play out through the communication between characters, or lack of any healthy communication so to say.
Rooney is very interested in how academically bright young people tackle the standard fodder of working out what they believe about the world; her characters ponder very heavily on topics like love, sex, hierarchy, economic realities. But for all the intelligence that her characters demonstrate throughout her work, it is often the emotional maturity and vulnerability that they have the hardest time navigating; which is perhaps a gauge of Rooney’s perspective of interpersonal relationships. One complaint that pops up in discussions is how the conflicts of Conversations With Friends and Normal People could be solved if the characters sat down and had an honest conversation with each other. Now, I am no sociologist or indeed a psychologist so don’t take my word for it but what I’ve come to realise is perhaps the point, that it’s the lack of healthy communication between characters that causes a lot of their anguish, succumbing to barriers whether it be internal insecurities or constructed realities.
(Mis)communication
In Conversations With Friends the main protagonist and narrator Frances, a 21-year-old uni student, is very self-aware of her reserved personality but that doesn’t inhibit her ability to have witty retorts straight out of the bank, even if that sometimes crosses the line into rudeness or passive aggressiveness. However, her desire to keep control of the sails of life, afraid of losing control of the various situations she finds herself in, results in her ending up isolating herself to the world around her. Let alone the people she cares about including her best friend Bobbi or even Nick with whom she is having an affair. The cycle of isolation and desire for full control in the unpredictability of life comes to a head when she decides not to tell anyone of her endometriosis diagnosis. Despite causing much pain that interferes with her life she justifies her reluctance to share her diagnoses with those closest to her, that will perhaps bring comfort, by believing she “could keep the sickness outside of time and space, something only in my head.” Rooney said that with Conversations With Friends she wanted to challenge her character Frances, saying that she “is somebody who’s a little bit more comfortable on the analytical level than she is both experiencing her emotions and also inhibiting a sort of physical body. Those things don’t come easily to her, whereas the kind of intellectual life she finds a little bit more comfortable. So, I think for me to take her out of her comfort zone and force her to confront these parts of life that for her are a little bit messier and more difficult to deal with.” This journey culminates at the end of the novel when Frances comes to terms with accommodating the more unpredictable elements of life.
“Things and people moved around me, taking positions in obscure hierarchies, participating in systems I didn’t know about and never would. A complex network of objects and concepts. You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.”
With Normal People the dynamic in communication is perhaps more interesting. A self-proclaimed Marxist, Rooney explores the socioeconomic realities of her characters much more explicitly in her second novel with Marianne coming from a fairly wealthy, upper-middle class household, whilst Connell originates from a working class background. However, once again it is the gap in communication between them that, in part, causes the tumultuous dynamic of their relationship. One pivotal sequence that epitomises this is towards the middle of the novel when Connell and Marianne break apart at the end of their first year at Trinity College. With Connell living far from home, he has to work long hours in hospitality to be able to afford accommodation in Dublin whilst Marianne is easily able to afford to live, as brought to life in the TV show, a very welcoming apartment paid for by her rather begrudgement mother. Connell, already feeling very isolated at university, unfortunately loses his job just as he is about to go into the summer break. It is at this point that Connell contemplates asking Marianne if he could stay at her apartment with the only other option being to return to his home town of Sligo. However, Marianne, based on her previous heartbreak with Connell in high school, assumes that he is planning on going home whilst Connell himself is too anxious to discuss the matter, worried about being a financial burden, leading to their rocky relationship breaking down again.
Now, I have only really analysed her work thoroughly from one perspective. You could potentially analyse Rooney’s work through the lense of mental health and trauma, social standings, gender relations and intimacy or economic class. As I had mentioned before though, it is the barriers in communication between characters that predominantly drives the narratives of her novels which whilst potentially making for a frustrating read as you follow protagonist who fail to have an honest conversation gives a lot to think how we almost re-learn how to communicate in the shift from being a teen or young person bounded to vague preconceived beliefs about the world into an independent adult. That is perhaps why Rooney chooses not to use speech marks, that whilst initially jarring and a bit confusing to read for the first twenty pages or so, invite you to regard the thoughts circulating in the characters heads just as important as the words that are actually spoken.
Wrapping Things Up
Touching back on the opening paragraph of this essay: is Sally Rooney ‘the voice of a generation’? Well I can’t really say anything for millennials, with the internet consistently saying I’m a zoomer, but in all honesty is it really necessary to answer that so early into an author’s career. I think that the best way to talk about Sally Rooney’s work, as basic as it sounds, is to just let her do what she wants and let readers and time decide. Like I’d mentioned before, I’ve liked both her books thus far but there is still space for her creativity to grow and mature. The synopsis of her latest novel Beautiful World, Where are You? indicates that she will be moving away from following characters in high school/university and focusing on adults in their late 20s. The plot will predominantly follow Alice, a young novelist from Ireland who must come to terms with her recently new found fame off the back publishing two massively successful novels, hmm… I wonder where she got the inspiration from? But anyways, I’ll be eagerly anticipating to see what direction she takes, I’ve currently got two or three books in the cue at the moment but I’ll get to it soon enough.