Sally Rooney is perhaps the closest thing we have to a literary megastar. She’s on everyone’s shelves, her book launches leave people queuing outside Waterstones in anticipation, even your mum probably watched Normal People. She is inescapable, and with good reason. Her books are accessible, immediately appealing and relatable to many. The success of BBC’s Normal People adaptation only helped to catapult Rooney (and stars Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones) into the stratosphere of success.
And, with the publication of her latest novel, Intermezzo, what better time to revisit her work so far and see how they stack up against one another.
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Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021)
Beautiful World, Where Are You (published in 2021) is by far Rooney’s weakest output as far as I’m concerned. It follows two friends, Eileen and Alice, charting their relationship to one another as well as with the two prospective men in their lives, Felix and Simon.
The novel illustrates Eileen and Alice’s relationship through the means of epistolary storytelling, with their emails illuminating their connections to each other alongside general musings of the world around them. These sections are where my biggest issues with the book arise. These email portions are pretentious and I found them extremely grating by the end of the novel.
Rooney writes largely about privileged characters living easy, comfortable lives, which is of course not inherently a bad thing but usually it’s not something I overly mind. Searching for just “relatability” in a text can be a trap that leaves you to sideline depictions of experiences that do not line up with your own.
Having said that, I didn’t find these privileged philosophical musings enjoyable to read in the slightest. I found they ground my patience down to the point that I could not give the rest of the novel the attention it warranted. Beautiful World just fell so short for me – I found the characters hard to connect with and the prose, whilst still often beautiful, was nowhere near as interesting as it is in her other novels. I was pleased to be done with this one.
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Normal People (2018)
It’s safe to say that 2018’s Normal People was a smash hit. It had everyone discussing it, whether on Twitter or at the office water cooler. It follows the complex relationship between Connell and Marianne, two university students who also attended the same secondary school.
Normal People was longlisted for the Booker Prize as well as winning the Costa Book Award, an illustration of its wide-reaching appeal for a variety of readers. The 2020 BBC miniseries, starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, gave the novel a whole new lease of life.
By and large, the novel doesn’t entirely work for me. On paper it sounds appealing, charting the at times frosty and at times intense relationship between two young people as they move into adulthood. In reality, Connell and Marianne’s relationship falls a bit flat for me. I don’t find them particularly interesting characters, with their lives outside of one another given little attention or depth. Even throughout the whole length of the book, I never quite understand what it is that draws them to one another. Why do they continue to come back to one another, even when so much in their lives has changed? I honestly couldn’t tell you.
Admittedly, I do think the TV adaptation works better than the book. The book features so many moments where both characters just shrug and say “I don’t know” to everything, which is brought to life by Mescal and Edgar-Jones’ performances. Both actors bring so much more visual life to characters, that on the page doesn’t give us a whole lot to work with.
I do understand why people love this one – it does a good job capturing the awkward point in your life where you are not yet an adult and are discovering where you stand in the world. For me, it lacks enough punch to be considered one of her best works.
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Mr Salary
As a bonus entry, I thought I would include a brief note on Rooney’s 2016 short story, Mr Salary. Clocking in at just 33 (A6) pages, this short story charts the meeting of ex-roommates Sukie and Nathan, as Sukie has returned to Ireland to say goodbye to her ailing father Frank. Mr Salary is short and sweet, and is an excellent demonstration of Rooney’s fascination with parental and complicated platonic relationships respectively.
There are hints of Normal People in here, as well as Intermezzo. It lays an excellent groundwork for things she will cover more fully in future novels, and for that alone it is worth a read. It’s only short, after all.
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Intermezzo (2024)
Her most recent novel, Intermezzo, released in September this year, is already being heralded as her finest, and with excellent reason. Intermezzo focuses on the relationship between two brothers, Peter, a troubled human rights lawyer, and Ivan, an ex-incel chess prodigy.
Let’s cut to the chase – Intermezzo is astonishingly good. It’s her longest yet, a whole 424 pages, and yet I found myself tearing through it. Ivan and Peter are her most compelling and detailed protagonists to date, and I loved being swept up in their personal woes, from the death of their father that drives the narrative, Ivan’s relationship to an older woman, Peter’s constant two-timing between the two women in his life, Sylvia and Naomi, or even just the question of what to do with their late father’s dog. All of this was captivating, on top of the time spent just in the perspective of either man, sitting with their fears and limitations.
At points it gets a little overly philosophical, which isn’t really my cup of tea, but it feels the most warranted out of any of these moments in her books. She gives herself the time and space to flesh out every character and their desires, motivations and flaws which does lead the novel to a satisfyingly abstract conclusion about the nature of human connection.
Intermezzo may not quite be my favourite Sally Rooney novel, but I would not have a problem with anyone who said this was her best. It’s a confident and very well crafted novel that explores fascinating characters with the respect and diligence they deserve. This is incredibly worth adding to your Christmas list.
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Conversations With Friends (2017)
Conversations With Friends is my favourite Sally Rooney novel and has been from the moment I first read it – sitting in a coffee shop, waiting for a lift home.
Conversations with Friends follows the relationship between Frances and Bobbi, who were once girlfriends and now are just best friends. They become entangled with a married couple, Nick and Melissa, with Nick and Frances embarking on a disastrous romantic affair.
I fear that 18-year-old me might have related to Frances a bit too hard, as a timid but well meaning person with artistic dreams bigger than herself. But even divorced from that, Conversations with Friends is a gem of a book, with prose that shimmers with unfulfilled desire and all the energy that comes with being an adult working out how you move through the world.
It’s a beautiful and inviting book that I would argue fulfils a similar niche to Normal People but does it better. Conversations with Friends is an essential read for anyone who feels lost or some unnameable feeling inside them. I love it so much and cannot recommend it highly enough.
