Young female Irish writers are setting a new trend in fiction

Publishers everywhere are looking for the new Sally Rooney, which is odd since as far as I know the old one is still around. As a result Ireland, which has never lacked literary talent, is giving us a lot of debut novels by young female writers this year. True, being the new Sally Rooney makes a change from being the new Irish Chekhov, but it is a high-risk strategy when many are called but few are chosen. Here are two of the most prominent debuts, with more, including Elaine Feeney’s much-vaunted As You Were, due in the coming months.

Naoise Dolan is the most Rooneyed of them all by people who have read Conversations with Friends and think Rooney is a comic writer, or have read Normal People and think she is a relationships writer, when in fact she is simply — as James Joyce described Flann O’Brien — a real writer.