Normal people, abnormal times: Sally Rooney’s beautiful world of radical romance

In her fourth novel Intermezzo, Ireland’s star author proves she is more than just a chronicler of young hearts.

The Irish writer is described as the “first great millennial novelist” and the “Salinger of the Snapchat generation”. | Photo Credit: Shutterstock

In one of the early chapters of Sally Rooney’s new novel, Intermezzo, the protagonist, Ivan, a 22-year-old chess player, invites Margaret, a 36-year-old programme director at the arts centre hosting an amateur chess tournament-cum-workshop, to the house where he has been put up by the organisers. As Margaret weighs in her instant attraction to the awkward but charming young man against what she considers a glaring age gap between them, the reader enters her stream of consciousness to learn: “…[M]utual attraction—which even makes sense from an evolutionary perspective—is simply the strangest reason to do anything, overriding all the contrary principles and making them fall away into nothing.” This sentence neatly sums up the overwhelming motivation of Rooney’s characters not only in Intermezzo but arguably in every book she has written to date.

At 33, the Irish writer, described as the “first great millennial novelist” and the “Salinger of the Snapchat generation”, has already achieved the kind of fame—involving both commercial success and critical acclaim—that most novelists only dream of. But stardom has not made her institutionalised: Rooney was in the news recently for speaking out against the ongoing Israeli aggression in Palestine when most celebrities have chosen to stay silent on the issue.

A still from the Normal People series featuring Connell (Paul Mescal) and Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones). | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Her stance has added to her aura of being one of the foremost intellectuals of the contemporary world. As a women shaping the views of her age, she invites comparisons with media personalities such as the actor-screenwriters Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Lena Dunham, and Greta Gerwig. This, of course, has much to do with the fact that her first two novels, Conversations with Friends and Normal People, were turned into TV series, expanding her fan base among those who have not even read the books. Millennials and Gen Z swear by her, giving her the credit of reading their minds most astutely, like a qualified therapist. Does the fame have some basis or is Rooney a passing obsession, like so many other things in the social media–obsessed generation? What is the quality in Rooney that makes her appeal to a diverse group of people across the world with different languages and cultures? We try to find the answer here by talking to readers who have taken a deep dive into the Rooneyverse.

Rooney’s debut novel, Conversations with Friends (2017), can be broadly categorised as a Bildungsroman. Presented from the perspective of 20-something Frances, it records her journey to maturity through the pushes and pulls of her friendship with her ex-lover Bobbi, her romantic entanglement with the much-older Nick, and her uneasy professional-cum-personal equation with Melissa, who is also Nick’s wife. What could have been just another story driven by infidelity expands in meaning through the ever-changing dynamics of interpersonal relationships. The novel poses questions about communication (or lack of it) in intimate relationships, which yet cannot rid themselves of class equations. What Rooney said about her novels in a recent interview is illuminating: “What I’m really interested in is trying to write about characters who are in relationships that are very important to them but which are characterised by a state of disequilibrium in some way.”

Rooney’s debut novel, Conversations with Friends (2017), can be broadly categorised as a Bildungsroman.  | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Perhaps what impresses readers the most is the characters’ determination not to be daunted by the “disequilibrium”. The choices they make in the process are often flawed, but the author does not judge them. “You never feel queasy or disgusted by the characters. The complexity of human emotion is illustrated so well, you just understand the characters better,” said Sonikka Loganathan, a 26-year-old news producer based in Hong Kong, who has read all of Rooney’s books. This is certainly true of Normal People (2018), easily Rooney’s most popular novel to date. It is a story of love across the class divide, which is temporarily forgotten as the two central characters, Marianne and Connell, succumb to “mutual attraction”. But class does not go away, of course. And so, Normal People becomes an examination of the question, is love a metaphysical force that dissolves mundane divisions or are its powers in this regard entirely overrated?

Rooney’s class consciousness

Rooney identifies as a Marxist, and Normal People is her most class-conscious work. The protagonists’ socio-economic backgrounds remain central to their relationship, shaping it over the years even as they seemingly defy the restrictions. In an interview to The New York Times, Rooney attributed her class sensibility to the fact that she belongs to a generation “that came of age during the financial crisis”. This is noteworthy, especially since Rooney’s generation is often accused of feeling entitled and far removed from real troubles, economic and otherwise.

Frances (Alison Oliver) and Nick (Joe Alwyn) in the TV adaptation of Conversations with Friends. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Such accusations are not easily brushed off, though. For instance, a recent article in Vogue pointed out how all Rooney’s female protagonists are conveniently slim, and so do not have to add weight-watching to their many worries. Srinidhi Madurai K., a 19-year-old student based in Chennai who has read Rooney’s Conversations with Friends and Normal People, conceded that the characters’ thinness might add to the “problem of lack of body diversity in media” while suggesting that the skinniness points to persistent mental health issues that the characters suffer from.

Rooney’s characters, indeed, are a melancholic lot (her books have been called “sad girl lit”). However, her third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021), is optimistic in tone. Arguably Rooney’s most experimental work, it has considerable portions in the form of email exchanges, which come off as indulgent, even a tad unrealistic (since the emails are quite long), at times. But the general tenor is hopeful.

Sample this sentence from Beautiful World, which is surprisingly straightforward in what it wants to say: “But if you think there’s any chance that I could make you happy, I wish you would let me try. Because it’s the only thing I really want to do with my life.”

Rooney’s third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021), is optimistic in tone compared to the preceding novels.  | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Beautiful World is also the most self-reflexive of Rooney’s novels. Through the character of Alice, Rooney seems to look inward and criticise the “bourgeois” nature of the publishing industry when she says: “If novelists wrote honestly about their own lives, no one would read novels—and quite rightly! Maybe then we would finally have to confront how wrong, how deeply philosophically wrong, the current system of literary production really is—how it takes writers away from normal life, shuts the door behind them, and tells them again and again how special they are and how important their opinions must be.”

Here, one cannot help but suppose that Rooney is speaking for herself in the light of the fact that she has repeatedly announced her discomfort with epithets such as the “great millennial novelist” on the grounds that they commodify her. Interestingly, Beautiful World turned out to be the least successful among her novels.

Reading Intermezzo

Rooney’s latest, Intermezzo, released in September 2024 to sky-high expectations. I took it up with bated breath, ready to be surprised but content to be in familiar territory again. Here was Rooney saying things as only she can—with a simplicity that might seem banal but is actually profound: “And what if life is just a collection of essentially unrelated experiences? Why does one thing have to follow meaningfully from another?”

Rooney’s latest, Intermezzo, released in September 2024 to sky-high expectations.  | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Having told stories from the female perspective so far, in Intermezzo, Rooney enters the male psyche, telling the story of two brothers, Peter and Ivan, as they cope with life in the aftermath of their father’s death. Peter, a 32-year-old lawyer, is conflicted between his fondness for Naomi, a college student who is constantly broke, and his lasting love for Sylvia, his college sweetheart and present best friend. Ivan, a decade younger than Peter, finds his life changing in innumerable ways when he meets the charming Margaret, who is in her mid-30s.

So, here are a few customary tropes: affairs across the age divide, lots of introspection, and a valiant effort to come to terms with grief. What is new here is the use of the stream of consciousness technique to delve into the minds of characters. Another novelty is the attempt at storytelling from the perspectives of two characters belonging to different generations. The demographic shift had happened in Beautiful World, which, too, had characters in their early 30s. What stands out in Intermezzo is Rooney’s balancing act in switching between the two perspectives. She does it in style, making Intermezzo her most mature and incisive book yet.

Rooney’s pro-Palestine stance and her active support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (a non-violent campaign promoting economic sanctions against Israel) have brought her more followers. So have her socialist leanings, which extend to her critique of capitalism in the context of the climate crisis (she ruminates on the topic in both Beautiful World and Intermezzo). In a recent interview with The Paris Review, Rooney said that the capitalist system is beyond repair (“We cannot keep plundering the earth”) and expressed concern over the world “heading for a catastrophe that is driven by our consumerist lifestyle”.

In my opinion, what draws people to Rooney’ writing is her expertise in chronicling the human condition with objectivity. She has evolved as a writer over time, further polishing her ability to put into words those difficult feelings and emotions that cannot be easily defined. Her characters are hearteningly like us, searching for meaning by searching for love while being all too aware of its pitfalls. To slightly rephrase a paragraph from Beautiful World: “So of course in the midst of everything, the state of the world being what it is, humanity on the cusp of extinction, here I am writing another [novel] about sex and friendship. What else is there to live for?”