Books hurtle through the world these days in craze-fuelled rushes. There are, for a given time, only one or two books that are allowed to dominate conversations, be talked of, or featured in Instagram posts. Quite a few publications have noted this phenomenon of ‘Just One Book’. It’s the big arrival – epithets shroud it, as do sales. You are allowed to review that book and take its characters apart endlessly, but only until the next One Book arrives.
For the past few years, this One Book has been whatever book Sally Rooney has written most recently. In September, Rooney’s latest novel Intermezzo arrived and was talked about only two zillion times. Yet, Rooney is universally read but not universally accepted. When Han Kang’s literature Nobel was announced shortly after the publication of Intermezzo, more than one essay lauded the purer poet in Kang, and her this-is-how-it-should be literature. Rooney’s novel was allowed to prickle as a hallmark of inferior – but gobsmackingly popular – prose. But then the world moved on – aided by Kang’s visible disdain at making much of her prize and the lack of one-line quotes that can be taken out of her books – and has eventually abandoned Intermezzo, hovering near Asako Yuzuki’s Butter and Satoshi Yagisawa’s Days at the Morisaki Bookshop and its sequels.
If we consider a book a cultural artefact – and not a treatise to be read and commented upon on the week of its release alone – then the time is ripe to consider Intermezzo and the question of why we read some authors, and why some others endure.
What makes this day and this age so perfect for an Irish author to flourish like Rooney has? And has Rooney truly flourished if her readers find it difficult to grasp why they like her books so?
Chennai, Palestine and a global author
She has four novels in total. Her earlier ones are Conversations with Friends, Normal People, and Beautiful World, Where Are You. Two of these are television shows. In all, the protagonists are set in the West. They live Western lives, speak of Western concerns. The government’s gnaw is present – in Intermezzo one of the main characters is evicted from her student housing – but not despair-inducing. Men and women, some very irritatingly young and beautiful, swish about their lives, causing each other pain. Why do we read her in faraway India – a place that is only ever mentioned in the beginning of her breakout Dublin Review essay ‘Even if you beat me,’ in which she notes (correctly) that ‘Chennai is not a wealthy city’ and then has the most Indian experience ever, a bus breakdown at dawn? What contributes to her allure in this craven corner of the world which is but an anecdote to one of the world’s most popular writers? We are clearly not finding much of our surroundings in her novels – so what do we find?
For all the attention her work receives, Sally Rooney doesn’t really do a lot of press. We see her repeatedly decry the genocide in Palestine – a move made braver by the fact that many a person with her level of popularity have not done such a thing. But we don’t hear much else from her about her.
So the little she does say makes her myth stronger and leads you to wonder as to how her literary being is dealing with her fame. Timed with the release of Intermezzo, Rooney spoke to David Marchese for his New York Times podcast, ‘The Interview’. In this wide world of standoffish authors and as one of the world’s most well known ones, Rooney is astounding in her acceptance of contrary viewpoints – often about her own work. When Marchese asks her questions that have frequently gotten interviewers into soups with writers – ‘does your own grief inform your characters’ grief?’ or ‘do you wonder if your books are very similar?’ or the very daunting, ‘I am skeptical you are being disingenuous’ – Rooney embraces the premise. Most of her answers are an acknowledgment to the interviewer’s thoughts. She admits it, ponders aloud about it, and then submits a pinpointed answer. Rooney’s interviews are true conversations. By the end of the 45-minute talk, you are lulled into a sense of peace with the distinct human experiences that Marchese and Rooney bring to the interview, along with the fact that they might not be the same at times.
Intermezzo, Sally Rooney, Faber and Faber, 2024.
It is this quality that crowns a Rooney novel. It is very difficult to turn yourself away from an author who is so interested in human behaviour. It is also, perhaps, her immovable ability to posit human experience – the essential roil of being alive and having thoughts – above all else that makes her a writer many love to pan. But even if you don’t like Rooney, even if you are writing essays on how her characters bore you, on how women are perpetually a certain type and men are, well, men, you still will be reading her work.
It has been almost three months since Intermezzo came out. The novel goes some way in explaining why it is possible to read Sally Rooney, enjoy reading Sally Rooney, but then find not much to report on the experience.
Ulysses in your head
There is no earth-shattering newness in the premise. The novel speaks in the voices of three characters – one woman and two men – making their way somewhat in and around Dublin. It is undoubtedly very Ulysses, not just because of this backdrop but also because of the crunch of lived detail that the book carries.
In this world where we can get machines to do our thinking, it is her headfirst plunge into thoughts that pronounces Rooney timeless and draws her readers in.
We are not given narrators’ descriptions of what is happening – we are taken through them with the help of enormous subjective passages. Peter’s rough staccato sentences jar against Margaret’s gentle, syntax-friendly acceptance of life. Ivan, the chess player, delivers his thoughts as you would a thesis.
What an easy and blissful transference of feeling the book carries. When Ivan – battler-worn and cornered – is happy, so masterful is Rooney’s description that you as a reader are also happy.
This unrelenting interiority, the quietness of pace and the unhurried story almost exhorts the reader to think about their own life – a privilege summing up the very essence of reading. You waft away from the book as Peter walks away from his house, and for a while, your own thoughts are given sublime primacy. They assume centre-stage and enrich whatever follows in the book.
Consider the following paragraph:
“On the drive back to town, they sit in companionable silence for a time. Margaret watching the road and Ivan looking out the passenger window. Between them she seems to feel a deep animal contentment that goes beyond words. In the darkness they drive together past houses, villages, supermarkets with lighted windows. Finally Ivan says aloud: Can I ask you something?”
This foregrounding of the experience of thinking and feeling makes Rooney the eternal draw that she is. Her books are no particular light on society, but they are a pinprick into you. When you read her, you are one with yourself, looking out the passenger window while Rooney drives the car. You get to spend time with yourself. It is perhaps the most selfish of reasons to read writing by humans but the most understandable too.
The humanness in a Rooney novel is visceral. You know as a reader that there is little, especially in Intermezzo, that is inauthentic to the human experience. Because we all live inside our heads, we are able to read Rooney. Because we all feel loss and love and hate, we are able to read Rooney. Because this experience of thinking is so unremarkable, we find nothing extraordinary in reading Rooney – although to gently hold the reader’s head below the water of their own thoughts must be an incredible skill to begin with.
Last century, as the Modernist novel fell out of fashion, and a postmodernist, often-decentralised narrative took over, it seemed unlikely that we were ever going to entertain a primacy of self again. But much of what we saw in the first half of the 20th century seems to have returned – genocide, rightwing hatred and so on – so it is no wonder that one of the most popular authors of our time would like us to look inside ourselves a little.
Is it possible to read Rooney in a burning room? If this room we are in is burning, then yes.
