Sally Rooney, a finalist for the Booker with ‘Normal People’, published in Spain ‘Conversation between friends’
“The Brexit threat with lifting barriers and us is putting it all very difficult”, warns the irish
From Castlebar, in the heart of the catholic and conservative Ireland, Sally Rooney saw it coming that they now call it the “silent revolution”… “The changes began to take shape in the years 90, with the loss of the moral authority of the church by the sex scandals. The society was already on a path, even though the politicians were slow in realizing it. The world took note with referendums from gay marriage and abortion, but what is certain is that Ireland was already a country as ‘normal’ and european as any other.”
At the age of 27, with two novels behind their backs -Conversations between friends (Random House) and Normal People (a finalist for the Booker Prize 2018)- Sally Rooney has been erected in a short time in the voice of the new Ireland, in the crest of the wave of the so-called generation post-crash, with authors Claire Kilroy, Colin Barrett, Eimear McBride, Sara Baume, or Lisa McInerney. Anyone would say that the social changes and the economic crisis has been the impetus not only to the literature, also to music, theatre and film-irish, the boom in culture that reminds us of far away at the experienced in Spain at the dawn of the Transition.
“all Of a sudden there is a freedom to speak that we didn’t have before, coupled with a capacity for self-criticism that did not exist at the time of the ‘Celtic Tiger’,” says Rooney. “My generation has suffered and has had to wake up. To all this joins that feeling of great change is in the air and that is reflected in the fiction they are writing in the past few years, is very close to the reality. This is the country that I recognize, and I recognize all the days”.
Sally Rooney directed by the way the literary magazine Stinging Fly, the catapult of many of the new authors, irish, along with publications such as Gorse or Banshee, the more the momentum of independent publishers of new stamp as Tramp Press. Gone are the times, even recent ones, in that authors such as Paul Murray and Kevin Barry were forced to publish in the Uk to be “prophets” in their own island.
The promised land is now Ireland, with mention parallel to Northern Ireland, who also lives his moment, “sweet”, as personified in the Booker for Anna Burns with a Milkman (a quirky look at the time explosives of the conflict in Ulster) and in the tug-of-literary magazines like The Tangerine
“Belfast has also become a cultural hub very attractive in these moments, although the Brexit threat with lifting barriers and us is putting it all very difficult,” warns Sally Rooney, who confesses to be “republican” and touch wood “so that you can see in my life the reunification of the island”.
Another distinguishing feature of the new literary generation is that none seem to feel the temptation to “find a bigger stage”, as in the time of James Joyce or Oscar Wilde: “it is Not that Dublin I feel passionate about in a special way, but I think that has everything you can ask for a great city, and more coming from a town like Castlebar. I could have emigrated like so many other young people of my generation in the middle of the crisis, but I decided to stay and now I’m paying the consequences… The rents have been put here by the clouds”.
“it pisses Me off that they continue to see Yeats as an emblem of irish literature”
Of all the “saints” and the literary of his country, there is one that will cause a special antipathy to Sally Rooney: “I have a problem with Yeats. It pisses Me off that we continue to see as an emblem of irish literature… we must Not forget that he wrote marches of fascists, who was an admirer of Mussolini and a proponent of authoritarianism, although he died before seeing the consequences of their dangerous ideology”.
The “education” of Sally Rooney is more well-grounded in american literature, her specialty his step-by Trinity College. Recognizes Hemingway and Fitzgerald as an early influence, and she confesses to be a fan of Henry James. Despite the fact that the wizards of marketing have hung the band of “the Salinger of generation Snapchat”, it does not admit a fondness special for the author of The guardian between the rye.
Although there is another american writer, most recent, by those who feel a true devotion: “I was inspired by a lot of Leaving the Atocha station, Ben Lerner. I read it while I was writing my first book and gave me license to incorporate cultural theory and art criticism as something more natural in the novel.”
Conversations between friends, your business card in Spain, tells of the intricate relationship between a poet with pretensions communists (Frances), her ex-lover and partner university (Bobbi) and the marriage formed by Melissa and Nick, artist and actor for more signs about the quarantine. The bump generational and wealth, materialism, and individualism, the sexual identity or the fragility of relationships are some of the basic themes in a book that rotates and revolves around the dialogues, embedded as an indissoluble part of the text.
“I Hate the quotation marks,” explains Rooney. “For me, the conversations are the thread of the story, and I can not “separate” from the rest using an artifice. I don’t know how to write it in a few years, but I can assure that I will not use quotation marks. I can see myself, yes, using each time less conventional ways”.
The addition of the “e-mail” as an integral part of the text is another of his hallmarks as a writer: “I Belong to the generation that grew up with electronic messages, even to the younger people, it seems already a half outdated. People communicate today in a very different way to ten or twenty years, and that is the reason to put it in the paper if you do not want to get away from the reality that surrounds you”.
“Who says that the millennials do not read books?”, ask Sally Rooney, with Normal People was several weeks in the top ten of Ireland and the United Kingdom, driven by the young readers packed into their presentations. “If you think about it, the texts fill our lives. The culture is increasingly visual, but people write more than ever. That’s why I think that the novel will not die, because it is a genre very resilient. In any case, it is transformed, as is happening with the short stories. There we have the phenomenon of a Cat Person, Kristen Roupenian”.
In Normal People, soon to be a tv series, Rooney recreates the unlikely love story of Marianne and’connell, neighbors in a small irish village (Sligo) and separated by “externalities” such as the ditransfer of class or family violence. “The two novels began as short stories that were growing,” warns the writer irish. “In both cases, the writing began as a “rapture” and then I took some distance for the final edition. Now I approach my third novel, and is costing me the structure, and the characters do not speak to me with the same clarity… And above the noise background from that figured in the list of the Booker. I hope to be in the height”.
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