‘Futile rage at nothing’

Sally Rooney inspires large quantities of what is known these days as ‘discourse’. This dubious honour is a result of her becoming very successful at a very young age, a misfortune compounded by being cast as a generational representative. She is a ‘millennial’, apparently. Her popularity has not gone unpunished. There have been several high-profile attempts to cut her reputation down to size. She is also Irish, which has led to her being scorned as a privileged white woman, the Irish people famously knowing nothing of suffering and oppression.

Rooney has kicked the discourse along by claiming to be a Marxist: an open invitation for critics to point out the many ways her novels have not incited the proletariat to seize the means of production. But her political identification, like the curiosity about Christianity that is threaded through her work, speaks to the present in a particular way. Beyond the intermittent passages where her characters note the exploitative features of their society or reflect on the teachings of Jesus, Rooney is interested in the underlying despair of a world where redemptive narratives have little traction. Her characters want to believe things could be less awful, but they don’t really expect a better world to eventuate, nor do they strive to bring it about. They are, by temperament, neither activists nor churchgoers. The exception to this rule – Simon from Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) – presents a luminous image of virtue that borders on parodic. An observant Catholic, who fights the good political fight with a progressive not-for-profit organisation, Simon also happens to be a six-foot-three dreamboat and a notably gentle and considerate lover. In the end, he doesn’t think his good works make much difference either.