Irish quartet: Beautiful World, Where Are You?, by Sally Rooney, reviewed

The millennial generation of Irish novelists lays great store by loving relationships. One of the encomia on the cover of Donal Ryan’s Strange Flowers (Irish Book Awards Novel of 2020) declares: ‘You have to truly love people to write like this.’

It’s hard to imagine that being said of Colm Tóibín or Anne Enright (let alone Vladimir Nabokov, Evelyn Waugh or Muriel Spark). But there are new kids on the block, and forensically intense examination of feelings between pairs of friends or lovers have propelled the fictions of Sally Rooney into the stratosphere. The phenomenal success of Conversations with Friends and Normal People, along with her influential editorship of the reputation-making literary magazine Stinging Fly, have made her a power in the land.

Her trademark formula combines close-up physical observation, sharp dialogue, will-they-won’t-they haverings and plenty of sex. If the content seems vapid, that is no barrier to televisual impact.