Irish author Sally Rooney has become a sensation across the Internet as BookTok has become more popular. Her latest novel, Intermezzo, sold over 12,000 copies in its first five days in Ireland alone, making it one of the best-selling books in Ireland in 2024. Rooney has become a popular figure amongst the new social media wave of book suggestions, but readers tend to have a love-hate relationship with her works. There’s more to the story than it might seem.
Rooney’s works have no doubt captivated readers, with her ability to write complex characters that resonate amongst different groups of people, despite the importance of the Irish setting in her books. Arguably, the most interesting thing about her works is her connection to theoretical texts that are so ingrained in her prose.
Rooney has publicly identified herself as a Marxist writer, using the class struggle, specifically in Ireland, as a platform to frame her novels. As readers in the United States, these parallels might not always be clear, but they can certainly transform the story. When people are quick to chalk a story like Normal People up to a story about miscommunication, it can leave out a central piece of information that’s needed to understand Rooney’s writing.
I’d like to start off by pointing out that class struggle has been a central part of Irish history and the Irish political landscape for decades. In using this connection, she can build her characters in their environment. As someone who’s read a million novels by American authors, it was difficult at first to understand what exactly the social positioning of Rooney’s characters was, but it certainly wasn’t impossible.
The other thing I’d like to point out is that Rooney is taking complex literary theory and implementing it into her stories, almost in a theory-in-practice sort of model. Rooney can take a complex concept like dating someone who’s in a different social class than you and turn it into the scene where Connell and Marianne break up (again) because he’s scared to ask her if he can live with her.
Rooney can show, not tell, readers the point that literary theorists are trying to get at in a very comprehensible way.
While having a theoretical background can really amplify your reading of Sally Rooney, and I highly encourage you to engage with the texts, the other beautiful thing about her work is that it isn’t necessary! While her work leaves room for a deep analysis citing the gender roles and wealth gap of her characters, it can also be another love story that you read and leave feeling devastated at the end.
It doesn’t take a theoretical background to finish Beautiful World, Where Are You? at 3 a.m. in your room, sobbing into a carton of ice cream.
Rooney’s novels have allowed me to explore and research a different culture than my own in a very unique way. They’ve encouraged me to engage in analysis and read more on how critical theory can be used in popular fiction novels. However, what makes her works so great is that they’re versatile enough to give me an immersive learning experience and an impossible to put down novel about a relationship between two people my age, where I’ll no doubt end up with puffy eyes from how much I cry.
Rooney brings resonance to issues that we may not even know we identify with. Connell isn’t the only one who’s been in a relationship that was going to fall apart because she had the means to get away, and he didn’t. Just like Ivan isn’t the only socially awkward teen having to deal with the grief of losing a parent on his own.
Rooney’s characters bring people’s struggles to life and allow us to identify with them, which also means that Rooney’s work can be a background text for understanding ourselves in terms of critical theory.
It’s quite remarkable that books that are so based in theory and the Irish social landscape can sweep the social landscape as Rooney’s books can. Rooney has made concepts that are known to be incredibly inaccessible to readers comprehensible in her novels. She’s proof that art can inspire education and broaden our minds. Theory-talk doesn’t have to stay in the classroom; it can become popular culture, and it has space for identification, for both you and me.
Want to see more HCFSU? Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest!