Sally Rooney (born 20 February 1991) is an Irish writer from Castlebar, County Mayo. She studied American Literature at Trinity College Dublin.
Rooney debuted in 2017 with her novel Conversations with Friends, and her second novel Normal People was the first of her works to be adapted into a hugely successful television miniseries, which she helped to pen herself for BBC Three and Hulu. This was followed by an adaptation of the former in 2022.
She is considered one of the most notable millennial writers and a pioneer of the growing "millennial fiction" genre.
Novels
- Conversations with Friends (2017)
- Normal People (2018)
- Beautiful World, Where Are You? (2021)
Tropes associated with Sally Rooney's work include:
- Author Avatar: Although Rooney arguably has more in common with Connell than she does with Marianne, viewers of the Normal People adaptation pointed out that actress Daisy Edgar-Jones, with her brunette bangs, bore a certain resemblance to Rooney. Same goes for Alison Oliver in Conversations with Friends.
- Capitalism Is Bad: Rooney is an open Marxist and implements this into her work. Class and financial problems caused by capitalism (such as the 2008 financial crash) play a significant role, and characters have intellectual discussions on the topic.
- No Punctuation Period: Downplayed as she does use punctuation, but absolutely no quotation marks for dialogue.
- Switching P.O.V.: She writes in third person, and is constantly switching between different characters' thoughts, sometimes doing so mid-sentence.
- Write What You Know: A significant portion of Rooney's main characters are writers or literature majors, Trinity College Dublin students or alumni, and from the West of Ireland.
