Harry Hartog Book Of The Year 2024 shortlist

Showing all posts tagged: Sally Rooney

Harry Hartog Book Of The Year 2024 shortlist

5 November 2024

Australian indie bookseller Harry Hartog has entered the literary prize fray with their inaugural Book Of The Year award. A shortlist featuring three titles, in three categories respectively, fiction, non-fiction, and children’s and young adults, was published a few days ago.

No surprise to see Intermezzo by Sally Rooney nominated in fiction. Nor All I Ever Wanted Was to Be Hot, by Australian writer and comedian Lucinda Froomes Price, in non-fiction. No word yet on when the winners will be announced (how so indie) but I’m gunning for Intermezzo in the fiction category.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney: early thoughts, reviews from critics

25 September 2024

I’m guessing a few people had a sleepless night on Monday/Tuesday, after getting hold of the new Sally Rooney novel, Intermezzo, at one of the midnight release events earlier this week. Book reviewers, meanwhile, were probably lucky enough to score an advanced reader copy (ARC), at some point beforehand.

Anyway, no spoilers here, just some brief excerpts from the thoughts of a few book reviewers. The consensus though, so far, being Intermezzo is different from Rooney’s previous three novels, but that’s not a bad thing.

Constance Grady writing for The Guardian:

Intermezzo is an accomplished continuation of the writing that made Rooney a global phenomenon.

Alexandra Harris writing for Vox:

I’m happy to report that Intermezzo is exquisite. While the experimental and polarizing Beautiful World stayed largely out of the minds of its characters, with occasionally chilly results, Intermezzo is all rich inner monologue, as deeply felt as Normal People.

Dwight Garner writing for The New York Times:

“Intermezzo” wears its heart on its sleeve. It’s a mature, sophisticated weeper. It makes a lot of feelings begin to slide around in you.

The crew at Melbourne based independent Australian bookshop, Readings, sound like they stayed up all night reading Intermezzo. Justin Cantrell-Harvey, a bookseller, described the novel thusly:

A slow burn that lingers with grief and ignites a longing for something just out of reach.

Laura Miller writing for Slate:

A casual reader (or dismisser) of Rooney might think all her books are the same. But her new novel is a darker, sadder departure from the formula — and it’s better for it.

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Be first in line for Intermezzo by Sally Rooney in Sydney tonight

23 September 2024

Tomorrow, Tuesday 24 September 2024, is the day Sally Rooney fans have been waiting for. That’s when the Irish author’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, is published. And from what I (and everyone else) can gather, anticipation is at fever pitch.

The good news, for some Australian fans of Rooney, is they don’t have to wait until bookshops open, as usual, on Tuesday morning. They can go along to Gleebooks, in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Dulwich Hill, late this evening, where Intermezzo will be on the shelves, on the stroke of midnight.

We don’t see too many midnight releases of novels, so I’m hoping that says something about how good book number four is…

Update: since queuing this post late on Friday, I’m advised the Gleebooks event is fully booked. Sorry, Tuesday morning, regular bookshop opening times, it is, I’m afraid.

Update II: For those who missed out on the midnight release this evening, Dymocks George Street⁠, in Sydney CBD, will be selling Intermezzo from 8AM tomorrow, Tuesday 24 September 2024. A free coffee is on offer all day for anyone buying the novel.

I’m happy to cover for you, if you want to tell work you’re in a meeting with a content producer, for several hours while you go somewhere and read the book (thanks Sara).

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Ireland: home of some of the best literature in the world

2 September 2024

Publication of Irish author Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, on 24 September 2024, nears. It promises to be quite the event. I don’t know about Australia, but in Ireland and the UK, some bookshops will open early on the day, so eager Rooney fans can get hold of her latest offering.

But Sally Rooney is only one of a cohort of popular Irish writers. The Emerald Isle* may not be the world’s most populous nation, yet it is up there with the best of them when it comes to literary output. Jonathan Swift, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, C.S. Lewis, Iris Murdoch, and Edna O’Brien, are among Irish authors who are household names.

So, what’s the go? What makes Ireland a country of great writers? As Kate McCusker, writing for The Guardian discovered, the propensity to put pen to paper comes down to a number of factors.

One is the Irish love of entertaining and storytelling, of which I have some first-hand experience. Another is the diminishing influence of the Catholic Church. People no longer feel they need to restrain themselves, subsequently they can write about whatever they want, including divorce, gay marriage, and pre-marital sex. The things we all love to read about.

The Irish government is also arts-friendly. A few years ago they launched a three-year trial scheme that pays selected artists and creatives a basic weekly income. There’s an initiative that has to make a difference. Artists and writers can focus on being creative, and not getting distracted as they try to juggle day jobs and art.

* the term the Emerald Isle comes from a poem, written in 1795 by William Drennan, a doctor no less. Even non-professional writers make for great writers in Ireland…

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, on bookshelves in September 2024

17 June 2024

Cover image of Intermezzo, the new Sally Rooney novel.

Intermezzo, the fourth novel by Irish literary fiction author Sally Rooney, will be published on 24 September 2024*. The synopsis is classic Rooney:

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties — successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women — his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude — a period of desire, despair and possibility — a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

I’ve liked all of Rooney’s novels, with Conversations with Friends, her 2017 debut, being my favourite so far. I’m yet to see the TV adaptation, but am told the book/screen crossover didn’t quite work.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I find many of Rooney’s male characters not to be all that driven, certainly when it comes to the women in their lives. The men are flawed (as are all of Rooney’s characters), and that’s ok, but they just don’t seem to have much motivation.

But said women are usually the lead protagonists, so maybe Peter and Ivan, especially since they are Intermezzo’s main characters, will be less plodding, less non-committal?

* that’s 24/9/24. Obviously not a palindrome… but does the date have some sort of significance, or was it chosen solely for its, um, numerical symmetry?

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The Literature Map, find an author’s literary neighbours

14 June 2023

The Literature Map charts the literary connection between writers. The closer writers are in literary style, the more likely a reader will have read the work of other authors in a writer’s “neighbourhood”. For instance, literary neighbours of Irish author Sally Rooney include Margaret Atwood, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Elena Ferrante, and Dolly Alderton. These are all writers whose books I have read.

The 2023 Better Reading Top 100

3 May 2023

The Wife and the Widow by Christian White, and The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, are among Australian titles I’ve read that make the 2023 Better Reading Top 100 list.

Other books by authors outside of Australia I’ve finished, include Normal People by Sally Rooney, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

A full list of all one hundred titles in PDF format can be found here. For those not in the know, Better Reading is a Sydney based Australian community of engaged book readers. Just the sort we like…

Sally Rooney on the hardships facing renters in Ireland

25 March 2023

Irish author Sally Rooney, writing for The Irish Times, about the end of an eviction moratorium that may render many people homeless:

The wave of evictions expected to begin from the end of this month is not merely theoretical: we already know that during the period of the ban, tenants in the State sought advice on roughly 1,500 new eviction notices. In a few weeks’ time, if the Government does not reverse course, these evictions will be eligible to proceed. Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien has even publicly accepted that homelessness will “very possibly” increase when the moratorium comes to an end.

While the situation is different, the outlook for residential renters in Australia is likewise challenging. In January 2023, vacancy rates nationwide were just 0.8 percent. In some centres — Perth and Adelaide — vacancy rates were 0.3 percent, which might as well mean there are next to no residential properties available to rent.

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Sally Rooney’s books are better than their film adaptations

21 May 2022

That appears to be the case for the Irish author’s 2018 book Conversations with Friends, writes Robert Moran for Stuff:

All the forensic psychological nuance that Rooney feeds us through Frances – her neurotic overthinking, her spiky self-loathing, her overworked efforts to affect nonchalant charm – those chaotic moments that lend Frances her skewed humanity, are dulled, if not lost, on screen. What you’re left with is lingering shots of Frances staring out a rain-streaked window, presumably deep in existential thought, but who knows?

Disappointing. I know I just about always look forward the screen adaptation of the novels I like, despite an innate weariness to the book to film thing…

A trailer for Conversations with Friends TV series

14 April 2022

A trailer for Conversations with Friends, a television series produced by BBC Three and Hulu, based on the 2017 novel of the same name, by Irish author Sally Rooney.

Conversations with Friends follows Frances, a 21 year old college student, as she navigates a series of relationships that force her to confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time. Frances is observant, cerebral and sharp. Her ex-girlfriend, now best friend, Bobbi is self-assured, outspoken and compelling.

Though they broke up three years ago, Frances and Bobbi are virtually inseparable and perform spoken word poetry together in Dublin. It’s at one of their shows that they meet Melissa, an older writer, who is fascinated by the pair. Bobbi and Frances start to spend time with Melissa and her husband, Nick, a handsome but reserved actor.

While Melissa and Bobbi flirt with each other openly, Nick and Frances embark on an intense secret affair that is surprising to them both. Soon the affair begins to test the bond between Frances and Bobbi, forcing Frances to reconsider her sense of self, and the friendship she holds so dear.

It won’t be news to fans of Sally Rooney, but the series goes to air on Sunday 15 May 2022.

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