My Sally Rooney reading experience

The last month has been a somewhat mixed reading month. I started off strong with Beautiful world, where are you that I loved so much that I embarked on her first massive bestseller, Normal People, which everyone assured me is her best work.

I think that was my big mistake. Reading two of her books back-to-back (especially when I was also distracted by The Sandman on Netflix) was pretty disastrous.

There are reasons for this.

1. I realize that the two books have essentially the same characters. It seems like Rooney specializes in a particular type of heroine – sensitive, maybe a touch neurodivergent, depressed, complex, all that good stuff. Her heroes tend to be louts – insufferable, self-obsessed, and not possessed of even an atom of emotional intelligence.
2. Both stories are set in a very specific emotional milieu – men and women who cannot grow up (to put it bluntly). They struggle to reconcile their expectations for their lives with how events pan out. Millennial angst is intense in all her characters.
3. Plots are non-existent, but there is a lot of deep dive into the characters, their emotional states, and how they perceive the world around them.

So, basically, it felt that I was fully immersed in her worldview for the past month – which was not the best experience for me (considering I am not really the target audience for her books, which I think is an early to late 20s crowd).

Beautiful World, where are you

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world? 

– Beautiful world, where are you

I loved Beautiful world, where are you. Sally Rooney’s writing is sublime, and sometimes her characters’ ruminating is poignant. I found myself really relating to Alice and Eileen. Eileen especially and her worry about reaching 30 without finding a man, or being a highly paid career woman was extremely relatable. She so clearly verbalized and embodied all those emotions that I felt at that stage of my life.

Alice is not quite as relatable, but successful women with imposter syndrome would definitely be able to see in her a mirror to some of their emotions.

While the plot is nothing much, I really loved these two women, the strong friendship they share, and all the existential angst they seem to feel. There is a slight political and environmental slant to the novel, which I thought was brought out really well. The ending was also a feel good ending, which I think I needed at the time.

Normal People

At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school soccer team while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her housekeeping job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers – one they are determined to conceal.

A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together.

– Normal People

Normal People is Rooney’s breakout book – the one that made her famous. It’s a book I might have liked if I had read it first. But reading it after BWWAY, I just found it immature and uneven. It starts off strong with Connell and Marianne’s love story in school and college. I found their romance very strongly rooted in reality. So many love stories around me moved in a similar way. Rooney really did a wonderful job capturing the realities of that first love experience.

But then, there were one too many break-ups; Marianne’s domestic violence issues and sexual kinks were very poorly addressed; and really page after page, their relationship just gets more and more toxic, until I couldn’t deal with it anymore.

The book ends on a will they, won’t they get together type of cliffhanger, and frankly, I didn’t really give a damn. I did feel sad that what seemed like a promising character study of these two incredibly well-written characters turned into a wishy washy mess.

Still, I might have liked this book more if I hadn’t come out of it fresh from BWWAY.

Overall thoughts

I get why Rooney is considered a New Adult author. She really does capture that slice of life very well. I love her writing style and definitely want to try her other bestseller Conversations with Friends but after a long break only.

Have you read her books? What do you think of them? Do you mind the repetitiveness in the writing style? I have an uneasy feeling that all her books are just a rehash of the same characters and plots. Why are they all so successful then?