The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 18 February 2025
by Sally Rooney
We're all pretty normal, right? Throughout our time in high school, we were normal teenagers, which means, also, that we each thought we were a little (or a lot) crazy in our own way. It was a way to stand out from the crowd, while also being solidly amongst the crowd. So we return to the heady days of 2011, and meet Connor and Marianne, two kids finishing school in western Ireland. They're immersed in their schooldays social dramas. Connor is bright and social enough. He's had some romantic entanglements. Everyone is sleeping with everyone else, it seems. Marianne comes from a family recognized as having Money, and so she comes off as aloof and isolated. Connor's mother works for Marianne's family as a house cleaner, and so he and Marianne often enough find each other having awkward get-to-know-you conversations in Marianne's mother's kitchen. That's where we start, and through regular jumps in time, from five minutes to several months, we follow our protagonists' romantic journey that seems lustful (and there is plenty of pretty explicit sex here) but is actually rooted in a beautifully rendered deeper understanding of one another.
We follow Connor and Marianne as they go from school to university, Trinity College in Dublin, and from the backwaters to the big city. Their relationship is friends with benefits, most of the time, but there is a deeper connection that they clearly appreciate when in each other's company. Rooney manages to evoke this intensity with a subtle grace that belies the otherwise frustrating path these take toward each other. But it's true love, eventually, and with a style relevant to these opening decades of the 21st century. This is no romance novel, and yet it is all about love and sex. And it is a recommended read, surprising and elegant at the same time.