At this point, it feels as though there is very little interesting left that can be said about Sally Rooney. Every criticism has been mined, every degree of adulation expressed. Seven years on from her dazzling debut Conversations With Friends, and particularly since the stratospheric success of Normal People the following year, Rooney occupies a unique place in modern culture.She is a once-in-a-generation sybil, the first great millennial author. Or: her books are superficially political, her prose is hollow. She’s a genius. She’s a charlatan.
This stifling weight of expectation seeped into her third novel, Beautiful World Where Are You?, much of it reading like a pre-empt to the inevitable critics. At times it was cripplingly self-conscious and overwrought with caveats. But with her latest offering, Rooney is firmly back in the driver’s seat.
