24.03.17 www.thebookseller.com


INTERVIEW SALLY ROONEY


EXTRACT


emotionally intimate. Conversely, for much of the novel she and Bobbi aren’t romantically involved “and yet they are obviously each other’s other half and do everything together, so there’s the sense that [theirs is] an intimacy that transcends conventional forms of intimacy.” Interestingly, Rooney sees the actions of the characters—particularly Frances’ affair with Nick—as partly stemming from their political convictions “because they see that what we have understood as the nuclear family, the conventional ways of being intimate, are often quite repressive structures that are not really very liberating. They don’t give people true intimacy or true satisfaction, so [the characters] feel a need to work outside those boundaries in order to establish relationships of their own.”


METADATA


CHATTERING CLASSES While all this is happening, the characters, particularly Frances and Bobbi, talk—and talk. They discuss everything: art, literature, sex, feminism, politics and, of course, each other. These intense conversations are wide-ranging, clever, funny, mind-expanding and thought-provoking. In their volubility and willingness to discuss anything and everything, her characters reminded me of those found in the films of Woody Allen. While Rooney has reservations about the man himself, she is a fan of his oeuvre, and she also admires the work of indie filmmakers Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig. “What I really like about Woody Allen’s films is that there’s a real investment in personal relationships. There is the idea that this is a serious concern worth making serious art about—how we love other people and how we can negotiate our relationships with them.” A literary influence on Conversations with Friends was Sheila Heti’s 2013 novel How Should a Person be? (Vintage), which left a lasting impression on Rooney. “It has a female first-person narrator who really challenges the reader and who is willing to display the worst parts of her personality to the reader. [She has] absolutely no intention of being liked or loved.” It made Rooney realise


CV QUICK  1991 Born in County Mayo, Ireland


Imprint Faber & Faber Publication 01.06.17 Formats HB (£14.99)/ EB (£11.99) ISBN 9780571333127 /9780571333141 Rights sold in 13 territories to date, including the US (Hogarth) Editor Mitzi Angel Agent Tracy Bohan, The Wylie Agency


that “you should make work that you don’t necessarily expect people to like or love, [and be] willing to put stuff in there that isn’t likeable”. Personally, I found Frances to be a beguiling character. At 21, she is well past adolescence, but not yet an adult, as Rooney points out. “She doesn’t spend much of the book thinking, ‘What do my classmates think of me?’, ‘What does the audience of my spoken word poetry think of me?’” Beyond the opinions of Nick and Bobbi, Frances simply doesn’t care. “I think people probably find that offputting. Some people would want Frances to be questing for their love, but she’s obviously not.” Conversations with Friends may be Rooney’s first published novel, and at 25 she is still very young, but she has been writing since childhood—and finished her first novel aged just 15. The house she grew up in, in County Mayo, was “full of books” and she always felt that her parents would be “open to me


announcing that I was going to be a writer. That felt like something I was allowed to say.” In terms of experience Rooney had had a couple of poems published in The Stinging Fly, an Irish literary magazine that focuses on new writers, when she began work on Conversations with Friends. It began life as a short story that “kept growing” until Rooney realised it was actually a novel. Three months later she had 100,000 words under her belt which gave her a huge mental boost. “I was filled with ‘Oh my God, I’ve written a novel— I can do anything!’” she says, laughing. Her short fiction and essays were published in Granta and The Dublin Review respectively, and caught the attention of agent Tracy Bohan at The Wylie Agency. When the finished novel was sent to publishers, a seven-way auction ensued, with Faber victorious and Conversations with Friends is now the publisher’s lead début for 2017. Her story “Mr Salary” has just been shortlisted for the 2017 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. Something tells me that the conversation about Sally Rooney is just beginning . . .


 2009


Moved to Dublin to do a BA in English Studies at University College; first poem published in Irish literary magazine The Stinging Fly





2014- 2015


MA in Literatures of the Americas, University College Dublin


 2017


Début novel, Conversations with Friends, published


Bobbi and I first met Melissa at a poetry night in town, where we were performing together. Melissa took our photograph outside, with Bobbi smoking and me self-consciously holding my left wrist in my right hand, as if I was afraid the wrist was going to get away from me. Melissa used a big professional camera and kept lots of different lenses in a special camera pouch. She chatted and smoked while taking the pictures. She talked about our performance and we talked about her work, which we’d come across on the internet. Around midnight the bar closed. It was starting to rain then, and Melissa told us we were welcome to come back to her house for a drink. We all got into the


back of a taxi together and started fixing up our seat belts. Bobbi sat in the middle, with her head turned to speak to Melissa, so I could see the back of her neck and her little spoon-like ear. Melissa gave the driver an address in Monkstown and I turned to look out the window. A voice came on the radio to say the words: eighties . . . pop . . . classics. Then a jingle played. I felt excited, ready for the challenge of visiting a stranger’s home, already preparing compliments and certain facial expressions to make myself seem charming.


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