My husband and I like to play Tessa Hadley bingo whenever she has a new book out. You get a point if one of the characters is dressed in a bad outfit, which the author seems rather to admire – a purple jacket with orange tassels; a long felt skirt; a beret, maybe at an angle. You get another point if a beautiful boy-man steals the heart of the story’s older heroine; bonus points if he is unaware of his beauty, a little callous, elegant or golden-skinned.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Sally Rooney said she thought originality was overrated: that she didn’t much mind the idea that she might end up producing variations on the same novel for the rest of her writing life.
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