And internalizing that anxiety, I think, much beyond the actual pressures that are placed on him in an external sense. I do think it stems from anxiety-a desire to be perceived a certain way by others. He is definitely someone who wants to know what’s considered normal, and then sometimes feels panicked when he can’t figure out what that is. I know there’s a moment early in the book where he wishes that he knew how other people’s private lives went on, because he feels so at a loss in knowing how to proceed. It’s constantly having your behavior at the mercy of whatever happens to be considered normal, and then not always having a template for that.

It’s not wanting to do anything that might not be the normal thing to do. Sally Rooney: I think in his case, it’s a kind of anxiety.

You write, “His personality seemed rather like something external to himself, managed by the opinions of others rather than anything he individually did or produced.” Is this apathy, or is just the formlessness of being young, and finding out who you are? Esquire spoke with Rooney about power imbalances, masculinity, and how to practice kindness in fiction.ĮSQUIRE: Connell often looks to others to instruct him in what to do and how to be. After a short-lived high school romance, Connell and Marianne pinball toward and away from one another through their studies at Trinity College Dublin (Rooney’s alma mater), where their intense connection is disordered by misunderstandings, unkindnesses, and jockeying for a place in Trinity’s fraught social hierarchy. Normal People is a pas de deux between two Irish teenagers, both star students: Marianne, a loner from an affluent, abusive family, and Connell, a popular jock born to a teenage single mother, who works as a cleaning woman in Marianne’s home. Written in crisp, elegant prose, with an abiding generosity for their characters, these novels signal the arrival of a formidable talent. While her novels traffic in the thorny complexity of how young people relate both online and offline, as well as the dispiriting economic realities mediating the relationships of a post-recession generation, they are also wise beyond their years. At 28, the Irish-born author of two sensational novels, Conversations With Friends and Normal People, has earned seismic praise, including the mantle, “the Salinger for the Snapchat generation.” When Normal People landed this April, it skyrocketed to viral fame with legions of admirers, who have crowned Rooney a prophet of fiction by, for, and about millennials.īut to characterize Rooney solely as a millennial writer is to undervalue her prodigious gifts-namely, the delicious psychological acuity that makes her novels crackle, and her ability to explore the influence of sociopolitical systems on individuals who alternately suffer and thrive under their weight. If you spend any time on the Internet, you may have heard of Sally Rooney.

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