♟️ Sally Rooney Ranked
Hello, and welcome to Pleasure Reading. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. And this is a podcast about the pleasure of reading, where I share curated reading lists, author rankings, chats with my bookish friends, and more. If you too take pleasure in reading, I hope that you will subscribe and share the show with a friend. Cheers to your next best book.
Amelia Hruby:Hello and welcome or welcome back to Pleasure Reading. I'm Amelia Hruby. I am the host of this new podcast, as well as perhaps your new book BFF and or your local virtual bookworm. And today I am very excited to be recording an episode all about Sally Rooney and her novels. So if you have never heard of Sally Rooney before, let me just say thank you for pressing play on this episode.
Amelia Hruby:Also, I'm very impressed that you like books enough to listen to a podcast about books and also have not heard of this author who I feel like has been everywhere for the past, what, 7 years now. But either way, I'm gonna give you a little intro to Sally Rooney herself, and then I am going to rank her 4 novels from my least favorite to my favorite, which is, like, a really hard task because I like them all a lot. So we'll get there when we get there. But first, our intro to Sally Rooney and her work. So Sally Rooney is an Irish author who has published 4 novels.
Amelia Hruby:Her debut novel was called Conversations with Friends, and that came out in 2017. Then she published Normal People in 2018. Her 3rd novel Beautiful World, Where Are You came out in 2021, and her 4th book, Intermezzo, was just released this fall in September 2024. So I'm creating this episode because Sally Rooney has a new book out, but also because she is one of my favorite contemporary authors of literary fiction, and she has accomplished this kind of a rare feat of being both a critically acclaimed writer who wins awards and gets fellowships and has all the fancy magazines write about her, and a writer who is popular in the mainstream. Her books sell tons and tons of copies, and her first two novels had TV shows made out of them that were both on Hulu, although one is no longer there, I think, for some reason.
Amelia Hruby:So she really straddles this world of critics and readers, and that's kind of a hard task to do. It's hard to please both of those communities, and I think it's one of the reasons why I am a fan of hers. Sally Rooney has also garnered some notoriety for a few reasons. I'm gonna give you 3 of them. One is that she is very young or relatively young.
Amelia Hruby:She is currently my age. We are 33. But her first two books were written, published, and super successful before she turned 30. So a lot has been said about her youth. The second reason she has some notoriety is that she refuses the spotlight in many ways.
Amelia Hruby:She resists all claims that her books are auto fiction, which particularly comes up with Beautiful World, Where Are You? Where a lot of people argue that one of the main characters is, like, a version of her, and she's like, absolutely not. We should not just think that all authors are writing characters that are themselves. Especially we should not think that women writers, all their characters reflect themselves. So I really appreciate that she pushes back against that.
Amelia Hruby:And she also doesn't speak about her private life in interviews. If people ask about these sorts of things, she's very clear that she's not going to talk about her private life because it does not or perhaps should not influence people's interpretations of her work. And so many people will talk about how Sally Rooney refuses the spotlight. And, you know, some people will do it a little, I would say, like, enviously. I've definitely seen some takes that are like, well, Sally Rooney doesn't have to be on social media like the rest of us writers because she's already famous, etcetera, etcetera.
Amelia Hruby:And maybe there's some truth to that, but I really appreciate that she makes pretty clear that this is, like, a personal and political stance, that she writes to write, and she is pleased and happy that her books have become so popular, but she doesn't think that means she has to become, like, an influencer for her own writing in the process. And I think it's important that we have people out there saying that, especially, like, in this culture that is so steeped in parasocial relationships. So that's the second reason I think she has notoriety, that she refuses the spotlight and she talks about why. And then the third reason that she has garnered notoriety is because she is an active and vocal supporter of the liberation of Palestine, and she has publicly refused to sell translation rights to her books to Israeli publishers. She talks about how she would love for her books to be published in Hebrew, but she will not sell the rights to Israeli publishers as a part of her commitment to the BDS movement, which stands for boycott divestment sanctions movement.
Amelia Hruby:That's an attempt to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians. And so even before this atrocious war and genocide that's happening in the world right now, Sally Rooney was someone who stood up and said, like, I will not be complicit in this, and I am participating in BDS to try to support Palestinians in Gaza and all over the world. So she has garnered some notoriety for that, and I especially appreciate that because I think that sometimes we see authors, like, shy away from the spotlight or refuse the spotlight because they don't wanna be political. And Sally Rooney's out here being like, no, I'm not gonna be in the spotlight, like, as the influencer you want me to be, but I absolutely will be publicly political, and that's important as a writer. And so for all these reasons, she's just one of my favorite authors and people in the literary space.
Amelia Hruby:And I just wanted to share a little bit about her and the cultural zeitgeist around her before we talk about her books. Now that I have told you a lot of reasons I like Sally Rooney, I also want to open this episode by saying that I don't think Sally Rooney is for everyone. Like, you can appreciate those facts about her that, like, she was successful at a young age. She refuses the spotlight. She supports Palestine.
Amelia Hruby:You can be like, that's all cool, and I still don't really like her books. And that's fine. That said, well, I don't think her work is for everyone, I do think it is for me and I'm gonna give you two reasons why I think it's for me. Reason number 1 is that I really relate to the way that she talks about personal relationships. Her books often feature millennials or perhaps gen x folks who have these problematic romantic entanglements and are trying to sort those out while they also just deal with the general malaise of life under capitalism.
Amelia Hruby:And I can relate to this. Capitalism, and I can relate to this. I am a millennial woman. I have been in very entangled, lightly toxic or likely toxic relationships, And I have many times tried to pretend that I am okay with avoidant attachment styles, even when I have been desperately anxiously attached in particular relationships. And I think this is a dynamic that comes up again and again in her work.
Amelia Hruby:She also writes about the ways that trauma can resurface in relationship patterns. She writes about the ways that we decide to do things that maybe we don't even want to do in relationships and what that means and how we work through that. And I think that the types of relationships that she's depicting in her work and the way she describes them is just something that I can really relate to. So one of the reasons I think Sally Rooney is for me is because I appreciate how she writes about personal relationships. And if you can relate to any of that, being a millennial, being anxiously attached, being avoidantly attached, having some toxic relationships in your past, you might also appreciate this aspect of her work.
Amelia Hruby:The second reason that I think Sally Rooney is for me, but maybe not for everyone, is the level of intellectualism in her writing. So Sally Rooney is from Ireland. She went to Trinity College in Dublin. She sets a lot of things there in her work, and she has her characters engaged with a lot of literature and philosophy. She'll even drop little quotes into the text that you don't know are quotes at the time, and have to read the acknowledgements for it to figure out like, oh, James Joyce wrote that.
Amelia Hruby:It didn't just come out of this character's head. And her characters will also sometimes get in debates about philosophical topics. Sally Rainey herself has a background in debate. She's written some characters that have backgrounds in debate. And so there's just this sort of, like, intellectualism threaded throughout her work.
Amelia Hruby:And I totally understand why that is not for some people. It can definitely come across as, like, a little pretentious or a little, like, out of touch with a more, like, general populace. But I have a PhD in philosophy, specifically with an emphasis in German aesthetics, and so I am absolutely here for the more academic aspects of her work. I live for those acknowledgements at the end of the book, particularly at the end of Intermezzo, which I just finished reading, that shared all of the quotes that she put into the text. And I was so intrigued to, like, peek at the Wittgenstein or the Joyce, like, everything that's showing up there.
Amelia Hruby:I even, like, loved, deeply loved learning that the beautiful world, where are you title was a Friedrich Schiller quote. I did a chapter of my dissertation on Schiller. So, like, I'm just in it with her on this, and I do think it could be polarizing. So I just wanna name that upfront. That in this episode, I am all in with Sally Rooney.
Amelia Hruby:But I think 2 of the reasons that she's really for me and is not always for other people are the way that she writes about personal relationships and the intellectual character that she brings to her writing sometimes. So do you have to have these qualities to enjoy Sally Rooney's novels? No. You don't have to care about Friedrich Schiller to enjoy her work. You do not have to have ever been in a possibly toxic relationship to enjoy her work.
Amelia Hruby:But they're definitely a big part of why, like, me, myself, and I love everything she's written so far. So now we've talked about Sally Rooney, why she's, like, very famous and a little notorious in the world of contemporary literature. We've also talked about reasons that she is absolutely for me, but maybe also not for everyone. And that means it is finally time to do the thing that you probably press play on this episode for, which is to rank Sally Rooney's novels from my least to most favorite. Now as you might have guessed, I love all of these books.
Amelia Hruby:So this ranking system, this is not a the good, the bad, and the ugly ranking. This is like a the good, the better, the best, and the bestest ranking system. So keep that in mind. I love all of them. And I'm gonna rank them from my least favorite to my most favorite and just tell you a little bit about the plot and characters of each one so you might decide if you want to pick up 1 or more of these for yourself.
Amelia Hruby:Or if you've read them all, you can just listen along to see if you agree with my takes and faves along the way. So in spot number 4, which is technically last place, but it's the good one, just not the better or best or bestest one. In spot number 4, we have conversations with friends. This is Sally Rooney's debut novel. It's the first one that she wrote.
Amelia Hruby:It came out in 2017. And this novel tells the story of Frances and Bobby. They are 21 years old. They are college students and aspiring writers. They have been they are best friends and have previously been in a relationship, but now perform spoken word poetry together across doublet.
Amelia Hruby:1 night while they are performing this poetry, a journalist named Melissa spots them and is like, oh, you're really good at this. We should talk about it. And Frances gets kind of drawn into Melissa's orbit and invited to her home where she meets her husband, Nick. And she has really complicated feelings about Nick. She's, like, unimpressed by him, but also attracted to him.
Amelia Hruby:They develop this flirtation that kind of leads to intimacy. And while that is happening, Bobby and Melissa sort of develop a thing, and so we have this whole, like, complicated relationship. It's not really a triangle. It's like a square, and we follow these characters as this sort of, like, builds and unravels. So I really enjoyed conversations with friends, but I feel like it's in 4th place for me because it does feel like a debut.
Amelia Hruby:It doesn't feel like it has all of the same layers that we'll see in some of Sally Rooney's later work. And I think that I really appreciate those pieces of the intellectualism, some of the relationship complications that aren't simply about the difference between being married or single or whatnot. And so this is a solid read. I enjoyed it. But for me, conversations with friends is in 4th place.
Amelia Hruby:On my scale of salius to ruiniest, which I just made up and absolutely means nothing, we're just gonna give it, like, a 3 out of 5. Okay. Moving on to the next book. So my second to least favorite, which is also my 3rd to most favorite, is Beautiful World, Where Are You? Which came out in 2021.
Amelia Hruby:In this novel, Alice, who is a novelist, meets Felix who works at a warehouse, and they go on a date, which I believe they met on Tinder. The date is kind of awkward. Afterwards, he, like, walks her back to her house that she's staying in. It's kind of, like, seemingly off the beaten path. I think it used to be like a church or something.
Amelia Hruby:It's, like, huge, and she's there by herself. And they have a sort of, like, funny interaction, and then he leaves. And they sort of develop this camaraderie that is a sort of, like, affection for each other at the beginning, but, also, he's like, you're weird. And she's like, yeah, probably. And, eventually, she asks him to travel to Rome with her.
Amelia Hruby:She's going there for a lit festival, and he goes with her, and, like, their relationship evolves from there. Simultaneously, in Dublin, Alice's best friend from college, Eileen, is getting over a big breakup, and she kind of slips back into flirting with this man named Simon, who she has known since childhood and is, like, college friends with Eileen and Alice and all these people as well. And the book, once again, has, like, these 4 essential characters. They get in different relationships. Things happen to them.
Amelia Hruby:They do things. They make interesting choices that maybe don't make any sense to some of us, but that's how the plot unfolds. And I think one of the interesting aspects of this novel is that we read these emails that have been written back and forth between Alice and Eileen. So we kind of get this sort of letter writing format. I think that's called, like, an epistolary novel, and I love that.
Amelia Hruby:I mean, I'm a huge sucker for correspondence. Like, give it to me any day, every day, all day. So I really appreciated that aspect of the letter writing. And then we also just see, like, scenes from these characters' lives as as they're experiencing them throughout the book. This one for me, I really enjoyed.
Amelia Hruby:I liked the central female characters. I enjoyed Alice and I liked Eileen. I also appreciated sort of the discourse around the book where a lot of people were like, Alice is Sally Rooney, somebody who's a really great novelist who never intended to get famous and has really weird feelings about it. And I appreciated that Sally Rooney was like, don't put that on me. No, thank you.
Amelia Hruby:So so I loved reading this because I felt a little bit like a puzzle of, like, do I think it's her? Is it not her? She said it's not her, but what do I think? And that can be fun for me. But I think at the core, the reason that Beautiful World, Where Are You fell to 3rd out of 4 spots for me is that it felt a lot like conversations with friends.
Amelia Hruby:Obviously, the relationship structure is not the same. We don't have the same age gap. We don't have that married single difference, but I think this structural square that Sally Rooney writes into her books is something I love, but also as I read them gets a little less exciting for me over time. So on the scale from Sally to Rooney, 3.5 out of 5, Sally Rooneys. Okay.
Amelia Hruby:On to spot number 2, my second favorite Sally Rooney novel. In this place, we have Intermezzo, which just came out, and I just finished reading, like, the day before I'm recording this. And I just wanna say that I really loved it, kind of despite myself. I was very skeptical I was gonna like this book. So let me tell you about the plot, and then I'll explain why.
Amelia Hruby:So at the beginning of intermeso, we meet 2 brothers, Peter and Ivan. Peter is the older brother. Ivan is, I believe, 10 years his junior or something like that. There's, like, a pretty large age gap between them, and their father has just died. And we begin the book in Peter's point of view, having, like, gone to the funeral, watching his brother show up at the funeral in this, like, really awkward suit as Peter describes it.
Amelia Hruby:And we see Peter's perception of Ivan as this chess genius that no one understands. Then we see Ivan's point of view, where Ivan is traveling to play this chess tournament, or more specifically, he's playing a simultaneous where he has been invited as an expert to play many people at once. And this simultaneous or simul as they're often called, which I know because my partner plays chess, not because they say that in the book. But when he goes to the simul, it's hosted at this art center, and he meets a woman there who works at the art center. She is older than him by about a decade or so.
Amelia Hruby:I think she's roughly his brother's age, and he begins a sort of relationship with her. So throughout the book, we move back and forth between Peter's point of view and Ivan's point of view. Peter himself has some complicated relationships that also include a sort of age gap. Ivan begins to, like, really deepen this relationship with this woman, Margaret, who he's met. And we witness these 2 brothers' perceptions of each other as well as their perceptions of themselves.
Amelia Hruby:So going into this book, I was like, the primary characters here are the men, and I am typically partial to a more femme or non binary POV. So I didn't expect that I was gonna enjoy being in Peter and Ivan's minds the whole time, especially because this book is written in a very stream of consciousness style. So I really thought I wasn't gonna like it. I was really prepared to be like, not for me. But over the course of the novel, I really appreciated the depth of their relationship, not because they were super close.
Amelia Hruby:Actually, it's because they're not. It's because they seem to have this desire to be close, and they keep getting in their own and each other's way in their attempts to know each other. And as someone who has a brother who I want to be close to but don't feel that I understand very well, this book really just laid me out. I don't think I have ever cried reading a Sally Rooney novel until I read this one. And it kind of shocked me.
Amelia Hruby:I wasn't prepared to have that reaction, but I did really love it. I also think there's something about the role that chess plays in this book because my partner is a chess player and works in chess professionally, that I really just have an affection for that world and enjoyed seeing it depicted here through Ivan's perspective. So on my scale from Sally's to Rooney's, we're going like 4.5 out of 5 Sally Rooney's for Intermeso. I love it very much, and I anticipate returning to it in the future. And that takes me to my number one Sally Rooney read, which will probably not surprise you, is Normal People.
Amelia Hruby:I do think this is her most popular book. It was published in 2018 and it is absolutely my favorite. So let me tell you what it's about. This book introduces 2 characters when they're in high school, Connell and Marianne. And Connell is this very popular soccer player who does not come from the most affluent background.
Amelia Hruby:So his mother cleans houses, and she cleans the home of Mary Anne's parents or Mary Anne's family. And so Connell and Mary Anne interact when Connell goes to pick up his mom from her housekeeping job, and they kind of develop this connection, but it doesn't make any sense in their school. Like, they're in very different social groups and at different places on the, like, high school social hierarchy. So the book starts there, and then it takes us to a year later when they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. And there, the social scene has shifted dramatically.
Amelia Hruby:So Marianne has really found her footing and is at the center of a cool social group, and people love her and she's really shining. And Connell is not finding his place. He is no longer that soccer star who's super popular in school. He feels very sidelined and unsure of himself. And throughout college, these two characters kind of come in and out of relationship.
Amelia Hruby:They connect, and then they kind of fall away from each other, and they connect again. They become a little self destructive, they both go through challenging times, and we watch their relationship unfold. So this is my favorite Sally Rooney novel because when I read it, it was, like, very reminiscent of some things that I was going through with a relationship from college. It came out when I was well out of college, but this was still ongoing. And I just really appreciated the way that I felt Sally Rooney captured this sort of quintessential millennial ness of being a woman who is caught between these embedded patriarchal values and our learned sense of like feminist liberation and like wanting things out of relationships that we feel are contradictory or intention with those 2 kind of poles we're trying to dissolve within ourselves.
Amelia Hruby:And in my twenties, I often found myself behaving in ways that I didn't think represented me or what I really felt, and I think a lot of that happens in normal people. So I really love this book. I also think it takes on some of the, like, darker aspects of mental health, which is a thread throughout Sally Rooney's work. So that definitely comes up here in some dealings with depression. It also, I should flag, comes up in intermeso with some instances of suicidal ideation, and so that's important to know if you want to read any of these books that these themes do emerge, and I would recommend looking up trigger warnings before diving into her work if that's important to you or helps keep you safe.
Amelia Hruby:But all in all, I think normal people is the Sally Rooney est book of all the Sally Rooney books, so I'd give it 5 out of 5 Sally Rooney's for sure. And I think that's it. We have now accomplished Sally Rooney ranked where I have told you that my favorite Sally Rooney books from least favorite to most favorite are Conversations with Friends, then Beautiful World, Where Are You, then Intermeso, and then Normal People. If you yourself are a Sally Rooney fan, I would love to know where you would rank these books. You can find me on my website, amilliafruby.com.
Amelia Hruby:Send me an email. Let me know what you think. If you have never read any of her books, pick one and dive in. I don't think there's a better or worse place to start. I can't promise that Sally Rooney will be for you the way that she is for me, but I think that any and all of her books are a great representation of her work in different ways, and so there's really no wrong place to start.
Amelia Hruby:Thank you so much for tuning into this episode and for listening to Pleasure Reading. If you enjoy this show, I would deeply appreciate if you would give it a quick 5 star rating and review wherever you listen. This really helps people know that the show is something they might want to subscribe and listen to regularly, which helps me grow it and keep making these episodes. As always, all the books I referenced today are linked in the show notes, and those links are bookshop affiliate links. So I will earn a very tiny affiliate payout if you make a purchase through my links, which I consider just a nice little thank you for giving you this book rec or these book recs today.
Amelia Hruby:I will be back soon with some spooky season episodes for late October. Until then, it has been a pleasure, my friend. Here's to your next best book.