![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Rooney’s work - its Hemingway simplicity cut with jabbering “ Gilmore Girls” erudition - has become, for no reason I can ascertain beyond that random spark that sets some literature aflame while so much else molders, an unofficial barometer of taste. She twisted me up.Īll of which is to say that the critic brings her own baggage, and that she doesn’t travel light. I’d either been wrong before, or I was wrong now, or there was no such thing as wrong. I didn’t merely enjoy floating through the worlds Rooney had conjured - I was enveloped by them. And restarted “ Conversations With Friends.” All in about 72 hours. Then, last year, I watched some advance episodes of the “Normal People” TV series. I skipped her second novel, “ Normal People.” Here was a 24-year-old scrapper sucking up all the oxygen with a simplistic riff on an age-old plot. What didn’t I - a millennial woman and member of the chattering literary class - see in this vibey, au courant ménage à trois plus un?įor a few years, while watching critics race to come up with clever new thoughts on Rooney to borrow some of her shine, I seethed. Recommended by a high-ranking editor with impeccable taste, the galley had been worked over by several others before me they’d all, she said, adored it. I quit “Conversations With Friends,” Sally Rooney’s first novel, after 50 pages. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores. ![]()
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