How Sally Rooney became a generation's leading literary voice
When Normal People was released in 2018, it elicited a frenzied response in literary spheres. The ill-fated but beautiful love story between Connell and Marianne was critically acclaimed, building upon the foundations of word-of-mouth buzz that her previous novel, Conversations with Friends, had set. Normal People was Sally Rooney’s breakthrough book, spotlighting the young author as a voice of a generation. One title even dubbed her ‘the Salinger for Snapchatters’ – a title she has been eager to shake off in more recent years.
So what is it about Rooney’s storytelling that resonated and reverberated so deeply? Both Conversations with Friends and Normal People were youthful observations of love, with the relationships in question derailed by external factors; class, age, other established relationships. It was Rooney’s deft and tender explorations on a matter with such wide appeal, all told in a voice that felt distinctly millennial and thereby relatable, is what made her such a hero for bookish teens and twenty-somethings.
Rooney is far from the first writer to spotlight love, mental illness, female body politics or friendship (a third book, Beautiful World, Where Are You, focuses heavily on the latter), but she is one of the few young female novelists to have her work taken with a degree of seriousness that other women in the industry have rarely been afforded. Books that navigate or explore these themes, regardless of how well-received they are by audiences, are often dismissed by loftier critics under the patronising category of ‘chick-lit’. But Rooney’s far-reaching popularity, further fuelled by the huge success of the 2020 BBC adaptation of Normal People, meant she could not be so easily undermined.
So what does this mean for Intermezzo, Rooney’s hotly anticipated fourth book? Proof copies were few and far between, with those who managed to get hold of one brandishing it like a status symbol. The novel marks a departure in style for the author; while it has many ingredients that make up a typical Rooney novel (messy, entangled love affairs are front and centre once more), the heart of Intermezzo lies between two widely different and increasingly adversary brothers: Peter, a successful and apparently impenetrable lawyer in his thirties, and 22-year-old Ivan, a lonely and socially awkward former chess prodigy grappling with his past success. It marks a welcome change of dynamic from the intricate friendships that Rooney has used as the foundations of her previous work.
Intermezzo also detours from Rooney’s last three offerings by looking at the untidy nature of grief, guilt and loss. These heavier, more meaty themes, in addition to a (marginally) older protagonist, makes the novel feel more mature; unlike the aspirational sun-soaked feel of her earlier work (both Conversations with Friends and Normal People feature summer soirees in European villas), Intermezzo is darker, heavier, more brooding – the action mostly takes place in drizzly autumnal Dublin, or a fictional town in west Ireland. It’s of little surprise that Rooney’s newest offering is more mature; the author herself is now 33, and the millennials who lapped up her earlier works are ageing with her.
Being 'a voice of a generation', and the fame that accompanies it, is never something Rooney set out to achieve. She is notoriously private, eschewing the glitz and glamour that is typically offered to an ‘It girl’ author, and expressed her frustrations at the label that has been placed on her work in a recent interview with The Guardian.
“I didn’t actually want to be ‘the young novelist’,” she said. “I just wanted to be good.”
Intermezzo proves just that: Rooney’s no longer just the mouthpiece on twenty-something romantic angst. She’s so much more.
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