Chocolate Souffle for the Soul: Indulging in Sally Rooney’s Obsession with Interiority
A mini book review of Sally Rooney’s novels
by msminibookreview
Quite unfairly, I will review Rooney’s works, Normal People (2018), Conversations with Friends (2017), and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2020), as a collection, even though they do not share characters or plot.
There’s something about Rooney’s prose that is completely compelling in all three of her works. Perhaps it is that the narratives are relentlessly intimate without being written in the first person (for the most part). Many of Rooney’s characters struggle with what I would call a chronic case of internalism. This is different than solipsism or radical egoism in the vein of Ayn Rand. No. This is more a shared compulsion to understand one’s own actions and emotions. Ironically, one of the ways Rooney’s characters undergo this discovery is by having sex with other people. Lots and lots of sex (often narrated perfectly well).
A reader of Conversations, for example, gets to experience all the emotions of the novel’s heroine, Francis, from which the viewpoint of the story is told. Any gaps in information comes from the Francis’ articulation of herself, which is sometimes almost omnisciently self-aware while other times, painfully obscured. The trick of the unreliable narrator is flipped on its head; none of Rooney’s narrators really know anything because they are too busy trying to know themselves. They cry when they are happy. They are apologetic victims and accidental monsters (see Normal People). They communicate boldly when they are uncertain and coyly when they are sure. All of this is chalked up to the fact that this so-called life is a real spicy meatball.
In a certain light, Rooney writes rom-com with minimal com and with a dash of the quotidian gravity of literary fiction. Hence, this is comfort reading, but elevated. The main storyline in Conversations is about Francis and her lover Nick, who is married to Melissa. And then there is the other storyline about Francis and her relationship with her best gal-pal, Bobbi. And then there is another storyline about Melissa’s romance with her husband, Nick (yes, the same Nick!). What results is a modern and satisfying twist on the love triangle.
Perhaps these will be remembered as pandemic books, even though some were written pre-2018. Overall, the collection feels like they are the indulgent answers to an anxious interiority, one so obscenely isolated that we are supposed to believe characters (of Gen Z or Gen Y) write long letters to one another (okay, emails) like they do in Beautiful World. It is more than just a way to use first person; it is perhaps Rooney longing for a world where letter writing may make a comeback. And who knows that it wouldn’t be therapeutic to write to others without the mitigation of a social media app, as we come to terms with a strange and ambling pandemic, political uncertainty, and the existentiality of the planet.
After all, Rooney is obsessive about the inner voice and so are we. I liked that the reader is trapped inside Francis’ head in Conversations. It felt familiar. Part of me wishes I could have stayed inside my own head to figure out a little something more. Instead, they made us return to work.
