Standing in the Doorway with Sally Rooney

At Vogue, Sally Rooney discusses her hotly anticipated new novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, and the books that provided a basis for her observational, haunting prose. “When I look at my own reading life, the books that I’ve felt completely swept away by are set among the landed gentry in 19th-century Britain, which I really don’t identify with at all,” Rooney says. “But I care about [those people] very much if they’re in a Jane Austen novel or a George Eliot. I guess what a novel can do is take you to a particular social world and particular relationship dynamics that play out in a way that makes you feel like you’re standing in the doorway, looking in and observing exactly what’s happening.”