The Great Millenial Novelist

For the New York Review of Books, Madeleine Schwartz examines the works of Sally Rooney, who was recently crowned “the great millennial novelist,” by many critics. Rooney’s two novels, Normal People and Conversations with Friends, are both intimate portraits of Irish college students set in the recent present. “As a portrait of young people today, Rooney’s books are remarkably precise—she captures meticulously the way a generation raised on social data thinks and talks,” Schwartz writes. “Rooney’s characters love to announce where they fall on the matrix of taste and social awareness. They read Patricia Lockwood and watch Greta Gerwig movies; they read Twitter for jokes. Decisions are made according to typologies.”

Photo credit: Jonny L Davies