2024 · Sally Rooney · 448 pages · Literary Fiction
Rooney's most ambitious and emotionally expansive novel yet, centered on two grieving brothers whose romantic lives are pulling them apart. The prose is sharp, the emotional intelligence is deep, and the structural experiment mostly succeeds, even when the novel's length tests its own patience.
2017 · Sally Rooney · 321 pages · Literary Fiction
Sally Rooney's debut is a cool, observant novel about a young woman's affair with a married man, mapping the power dynamics of modern relationships with intelligence and restraint, though its deliberately flat affect may keep some readers at a distance.
2021 · Sally Rooney · 356 pages · Literary Fiction
Sally Rooney's third novel captures the anxieties and contradictions of being young, educated, and politically aware in a world that feels like it's falling apart, while also being a story about four people trying to figure out love. The email chapters between Alice and Eileen are the book's most distinctive and rewarding feature, offering a kind of intellectual intimacy that feels rare in contemporary fiction. The plot itself is thin, and some readers will find the philosophical digressions more frustrating than illuminating. But for readers who connected with Rooney's earlier work, this is a deeper and more ambitious extension of the same territory.
2022 · 1 Season · BBC Three / Hulu · Drama
Conversations with Friends is a faithful adaptation of Sally Rooney's debut novel that captures the quiet emotional complexity of its source material but struggles to generate the dramatic momentum that television demands. The performances are subtle and the Dublin setting is beautifully rendered, but the show's commitment to interiority over incident leaves many viewers feeling that the conversations are more interesting on the page than on the screen.