Sally Rooney: What Makes Her Books So Beautiful?

Article by Lidia Ferenc-Kaivo (10.04.2025)

I remember lying on my mum's carpet a few years ago on a slow and idle Saturday. She was out somewhere and I was bored. I was looking at the mountains of books piled haphazardly around on the floor. My eyes followed the spines, up and down. Out of the mesh of self-help books and Virginia Woolf novels, an orange paperback caught my eye. Normal People. I rolled over, closer to the book and tried my best to slide it out of the pile without the ones above toppling over. On the cover was a sardine box with two people inside, arms wrapped around each other. Intimate and personal. I looked through the pages but was scared to read them. The front cover seemed scandalous and off-limits to me. 

A few years later I read the book, after it was suggested to me. And it was not scandalous like I had thought it would be. Instead, it was delicate, beautiful and painful too. Marianne and Connell, dancing around each other in the game of life. If you have not read it I would highly recommend you do. I think it was one of the first books I read where I realised how strong words can be, and what beautiful tales they can weave. The power to create characters in your brain and then give them a story. To take inspiration from people on the streets, people in your own life, anyone and weave them all together to create intricate and complex new people. I loved it. So I craved to read more of her books. I read Conversations with Friends and Beautiful World, Where Are You? within the next few weeks. I flipped the pages as fast as possible. I dreaded coming to the end because I knew it would be over. At that point, she had only written three books and I had read them all. Of course, other authors write similarly to her but I have never found a book that emanates the same energy. Her writing is prosaic. The words flow together and I feel like my brain absorbs them so much faster. It’s like I'm reading my own thoughts or perhaps Rooney’s, exactly how she thinks them. She doesn’t follow the traditional rules of writing. No quotation marks and sentences that run into each other. Dialogues merge. Thoughts, spoken word and outside observations are mixed. She repeats herself, but purposefully. If you were to write an essay at school in her style, you would probably get 0 marks. But that’s the beauty of literature. It’s an art form like any other. No one tells you how to paint, or how to wield your paintbrush, or what to photograph. It comes from within, and it’s your choice of how you want to conceptualize your art. 

I’ve seen a lot of people complain about Rooney’s writing style. They say it’s confusing and difficult to follow. Of course, I understand this. If you're not used to the different style of writing, it can feel a bit chaotic. You can get lost in the words. Her most recent book, Intermezzo, definitely felt less structured than her older books. You have to focus and follow the train of thought of the characters attentively. Subjects jump around, moods swing violently. The formulation changes according to who the characters are and what their mental state is. In Intermezzo there are two brothers. Ivan and Peter. Ivan is a chess genius. He is intelligent but lacks social skills. This is portrayed in the writing. He may be in a conversation but we are also reading his thoughts, which can be about something completely different. I felt anxious reading his parts because I was worried he would not be engaging in the conversation he was having. It was like in a horror movie, when you know the murderer is hiding in the closet but the main character has no idea. A writer is like a director. The way a movie is shot has a huge impact on how it is perceived. It’s not just about the script and actors but also the timing, lighting, angles, and music. A writer’s writing does the same thing. The build of the sentences, the punctuation, the wording, it all plays a role. Peter, the other brother, seems to have his life together. A successful lawyer, expensive apartment, rich friends. But the way his paragraphs are structured is much more chaotic and confusing. At the start, you don’t understand why, but as you get deeper into the book you understand that mentally, he is doing awfully. He has suicidal thoughts sprinkled between his sophisticated lawyer thoughts. The style of writing reflects his emotions and turbulent brain. 

Rooney creeps up on you softly. You’ll be reading a simple conversation between two characters and you won’t think much of it. Then it will take a sharp turn to an emotional and tear-jerking passage. She seems to be all-knowing. She observes people in a way that feels invasive and personal. A lot of times I feel myself relating to her characters and their thoughts. She shows the beauty of mundane days, like a child reading a book on the subway, which she turns into a symbol of youth and innocence that her characters ponder about for pages on end—and yet it’s never boring. If you have not read her books, I highly recommend you do. She’s incredibly talented.