Irish novelist Sally Rooney unravels the similar characters in different words. Her dialogues are filled with discourse on Marxism, classism, late capitalism, identity and gender politics. Her novels continue to divide readers; some find her social complications infuriating and her characters unreliable. But that’s what makes them interesting and relatable, as Anne Enright writes to the Guardian: ‘‘This is prose you either get or don’t get; for some it is incisive, for others banal. Which makes me wonder if it is so clean, it reflects the readers’ prejudices right back at them.’’

Whether you’re reading her for the slow-burn yet so intimate romances between Connell and Marianne or Francis and Nick, or already distinguishing her as the decade’s contemporary author, you cannot deny that her characters and their stories are well-rounded. 

Critics have agreed on the fact that what sets her apart is the raw depictions of relationships between lovers and friends. Rooney’s introspection is translated to her ”ordinary” characters’ daily life or coming-of-age story. Her words skilfully illustrate the sense of urgency young people feel to make sense of the world. Consequently she is named ”the voice of a generation.”

While waiting for her new novel Intermezzo to be published this fall, I reflected on her previous works. In this article, you can find my rating of her three best-seller novels: Normal People, Conversations with Friends, and Beautiful World Where Are You?

Warning: Spoilers Ahead! 

#3 – Conversations with Friends

The main character Francis, a literature student in Dublin with an uncertain future, is in a relationship with the timid actor Nick, who is about ten years older than her and already committed to Melissa, a successful journalist. The novel progresses as Francis intrudes into the lives of the couple. Their secret relationship accelerates when Francis and her extroverted close friend Bobbi are invited to stay in France by Melissa. All of these characters are met during a poetry reading of Francis and Bobbi which takes place in the beginning of the novel. 

Francis could be disillusioned to some readers, but it’s undeniable that Rooney created her most significant flawed character. As an unreliable narrator Francis puts people she loves on a pedestal, and already despises a person in mere seconds of meeting. While trying to persuade Nick, Francis’ own insecurities with her own appearance, self-loathing tendencies and anxious ruminative thoughts are imprinted onto her more lively companion Bobbi, and also onto wealthy and sophisticated Melissa.

A certain aspect of Rooney’s novels is that she’s not afraid of criticising her main characters and not romanticising them, which makes them even more natural as she explores the precarious relationship Francis tries so hard to hold onto.

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But it might be the most tiresome Rooney book out of the three since we’re reading only one point of view, which becomes disengaging through time (though Melissa’s letter makes it worth reading up until to the end).

#2 – Beautiful World, Where Are You?

Here we are introduced to Alice, Eileen, Felix and Simon. In this book Rooney deeply explores the literature and publishing scene through two intellectual friends Alice and Eileen. Famous novelist Alice dates a warehouse worker Felix through Tinder and forms an unlikely romance. Eileen, who works in a literary magazine, mingles with her childhood friend, a handsome politician and a Catholic Simon. 

Rooney writes an epistolary novel. She unpacks the lives of long-time friends Alice and Eileen through e-mails they write to each other, up until the end when they meet and resolve things they are afraid to say to each other, such as why they couldn’t just meet in person for so long. These emails work as diary entries and essays, writing about what random discourse they are momentarily fixated on, such as the Bronze Age Collapse, the story behind a Manet painting or the imminent collapse of capitalism – perhaps late-night Wikipedia searches of Rooney’s own. It’s surely exciting and engaging to see a glimpse of Rooney’s head-space. 

Yet the most immersive aspect of these entries is the shared tone and connection between Alice and Eileen. Rooney perfectly builds up a complex female friendship through a series of replies. The two expose their deepest, most sincere feelings they never mention to any other characters, such as their deep fear of failure, imposter syndrome in their career and trying to find reason in their irrational feelings towards the people they love. Right after the touching and thought-provoking entries they end the emails with a totally cheerful invite to get coffee in Dublin.

Rachel Wells from Forbes writes ‘Impostor syndrome is a psychological pattern in which individuals consider themselves a fraud and feel unworthy to occupy a space or fill a role, regardless of the fact that their education skills and experience prove the opposite.’  

When you have impostor syndrome you might second guess your skills and attribute your achievements to luck. Reinforcing negative self-beliefs leads to low self-esteem, anxiety and perfectionism, ultimately limiting our own potential.

Cheri Beranek of Entrepreneur states: ‘Often, imposter syndrome is an internal experience of intellectual or professional inadequacy.  For women, the biases and stereotypes in the workplace can foster and exacerbate those feelings of not belonging.’

Harvard Business Review reveals an internal study by Hewlett Packard, which reportedly found that men apply to jobs when they only meet about 60% of the qualifications, while women tend to apply only if they meet 100. 

‘After all, when people are dying on their deathbeds, don’t they always start talking about their spouses and children? Isn’t death just the apocalypse in the first person?’ writes Eileen. This is Rooney’s most optimistically nihilistic novel. Why are we so obsessed with fiction, art, worship and finding meaning if nothing is worth it at the end? Her characters’ lives go on even though they can’t find a concrete answer to the questions they are grappling with without being cheesy.

After finishing the novel, Alice and Felix’ arcs, individually and as a couple, feel incomplete and rushed. Did Rooney just decide to cut to the chase with ‘We all have our flaws and forgiveness is key.’

Alice and Eileen’s non-stop rambling about morality, white privilege and performativity starts to feel repetitive after already reading once, but maybe that’s the point Rooney wants to make. They constantly think about their space in this world. As everyone does.

#1 – Normal People

‘Connell wished he knew how other people conducted their private lives, so that he could copy from example.’

It might be my own bias because I took the plunge and dived into the Rooney-verse with Normal People, but I saved the best for the last. Normal People describes a coming-of-age story of two friends Marianne and Connell, whose lives are entangled even when they don’t want to.

As she famously mentions in interviews, Rooney adds class status as a part of social complications, often lying underneath her characters’ miscommunication issue. She often chooses a university setting to unpack class consciousness further, where many people from different cities, groups or communities are brought together. In Normal People, imposter syndrome correlates with class, as working class Connell is unfair to himself and feels inadequate compared to upper class Marianne and his other classmates, whose families also have an intellectual upper-class background, in Trinity College Dublin. 

But their story is so much more than an upper & lower class romance. As they grow up and become college students, Marianne and Connell’s disturbingly accurate inner monologues, depicting their mental health journey, touched many readers, but also viewers of the BBC screen adaptation of the same name. 

‘In just a few weeks’ time Marianne will live with different people, and life will be different. But she herself will not be different. She’ll be the same person, trapped inside her own body. There’s nowhere she can go that would free her from this.’

Through Marianne and Connell, Rooney pens how it feels to be an outsider and the fear of non-conformity with exceptional precision and thought. Their inner voices and dialogues make you underline paragraphs and note ‘That’s what I was feeling!’ As Rooney understands their psychology very well, chapters dedicated respectively to Connell and Marianne perfectly compliment each other. You end up caring so much for Marianne and Connell, and the nail-biting tension makes you root for them, wondering where they’ll end up until the end. 

Sally Rooney digs out traits and feelings many of us do not wish to talk about, or can’t even properly translate them into words. Those bittersweet words feel fresh in the age of consumerism, make you feel warm and ponder on your life and relationships. That is why many readers hold Rooney novels ever so dearly.

_{Cover photo by People}