#her whole ooh look at meeee I went to tcd so I know everything about Ireland also drives me insane for several reasons

[werewolfetone]

ngl but I still haven’t read any sally rooney. it started off because everyone seemed to be So Into Her but whenever I read the synopsis of any of her books they just. didn’t strike me as interesting and now it’s almost turned into a matter of principle. idk I think a lot of the gushing over her is people being pretentious and faux-intellectual when I’ve never seen a snippet of her work that made me think “yeah I want more of this”. plus like voice of a generation? the girl did english lit in trinity, she’s hardly the model for 99% of Irish people and I say that as someone who did english and history in maynooth. it’s like everyone wants an Idol so they’ve picked this girl just because normal people “Scandalised” the nation when I’ve read better marian keyes books. anyway as a rural queer Irish person into literature sally rooney is doing nothing for me and for all the times I’ve thought maybe I should give her a chance I look at her synopses and decide I’m better off reading things that actually strike me as interesting and relevant to my experiences, not something that the establishment has decided speaks for people my age

Oh I completely agree with you, especially about her being faux intellectual and pretentious, what I've read of her has struck me as being what a not very well read young teenager would think good writing about complex relationships is in that I think it would be interesting and groundbreaking only if you had never read better books about similar subjects. My other major grievance with her is that she is shockingly bad at getting you to be invested at all in her characters, to the point where they could have both been run over by a train halfway through normal people and I don't think I would have cared. They simply aren't interesting in any way and her novels are very character driven so they kind of just. don't hold up. And when there is some plot it's also incredibly boring. Imo you're definitely better off not reading her work