Acknowledgments in books tell their own backstories of influence and support: the necessary people in an author’s life who help underpin the scaffolding involved in constructing a book. Throughout her career, Sally Rooney has acknowledged the editorial advice she has received from a long-time friend, John Patrick McHugh. In Normal People, she wrote: “Thanks, firstly, to John Patrick McHugh, who was with this novel long before I had finished writing it, and whose conversation and guidance contributed so substantially to its development.”
McHugh’s debut novel, Fun and Games, is published this month, with a rare cover endorsement by Rooney. It was now his turn to write acknowledgments: “Thank you to Sally Rooney for being the best reader of my writing and a wonderful friend besides that.”
On Wednesday evening, at Cúirt International Festival of Literature, the two friends and editors of each other’s work sit down together for an hour in the Town Hall Theatre in Galway. They have been introduced by Manuela Moser, who again tells the audience that Rooney will be signing books for 45 minutes afterwards. She pauses as if she has forgotten something, and then swiftly adds with embarrassment, “And JP will be signing books too!”
Rooney and McHugh are in conversation with a third author, the Derry novelist Susanna Dickey. Both authors begin by reading short extracts from their work. The conversation begins with Dickey noting that participating in games is an integral part of characters’ lives in both Intermezzo and Fun and Games; chess-player Ivan, and Gaelic football player John.
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“I am drawn to loners,” says Rooney, pointing out that chess, unlike football, is not a team sport. “I write a lot about people who are quite solitary.” She wonders aloud if this is because being a writer “is a very solitary occupation, and it’s also very obsessive. There’s a hyperfixation that comes along with it. And although, of course, it’s not directly competitive, you want the same thing of wanting always to be better, and wanting always to drive yourself forward in some way.”
“How do you feel commencing a new novel?” asks Dickey. “Does every novel feel like a new approach?”
“I certainly don’t ever think, Oh, it’s time to write another novel. I’ll just get my novel tools out,” says Rooney. “There are certain things I’ve learned; you learn about how to write a scene, but really, 99.9 per cent of it is I’ve never tried to do this before and I wouldn’t enjoy it if I had. I need to be doing something that I don’t know how to do. And so it has to feel like you’re playing with fire every time, and that it could all go horribly wrong. If you don’t feel that it could, then you have a problem. I don’t ever want to feel that I am doing something formulaic.”
There is some talk of the current state of international politics. “What do you two think about the capacity of the modern novel?” asks Dickey. “Can it achieve political upheaval?”
“Probably not, no,” says McHugh. “If you look at the news for the last month, is there a power for the arts to do something, and to get people thinking and talking, yeah, for sure. But to think the novel has the cultural power to do that?” He shakes his head and then looks across mischievously at his friend. “If it’s written by Sally Rooney, maybe. You sure made GAA shorts incredibly popular.”
The audience howls.
Rooney has spoken in the past about how she finds publicity events challenging, and how fiercely she strives to keep her personal life personal. She touches on this again.
“A novel is not really complete until it meets readers, and I’ve spoken before of how I find the publication aspect of the novel tricky,” she says. “Sometimes I think: why don’t I just write my novel, which I love doing – I love writing a book – then just save it in my documents? But it’s not complete when it stays in my documents; it’s only complete when it goes out into the world. And whether a lot of people read it, or only a few people read it, that’s when it finds its final form in the meeting of another mind.
“There is a part of me that always knows that, even though I would just kind of love to create these people and never let them go, but there is an artistic imperative to let the novel be published, and let people make of it what they will. That is the final part of the work of art.”
Even writers as celebrated as Rooney experience stress around publication of a new book. “Of course there are the highs of knowing people are connecting with it, and that is amazing, that is so rewarding. But there is also all the anxiety around feeling that you are letting something go that means more to you than anything else in the world, and people can say literally whatever – and they do,” she says, stressing the final two words with a grimace.
They discuss relationships in both authors’ work, and the role that gender expectations play in them.
“I do notice in my work that there is sometimes an imbalance in the extent to which men can call on the emotional resources of the women in their lives,” says Rooney. “And maybe that’s something to do with the gender system and how that works. Or maybe it’s something to do with my own writing; I don’t know.
“I certainly think that ultimately there is a sense of redemption in the inter-relationships in my work. I do think that most of these characters really love each other; it’s just that I think perhaps we live in a social system where women are socialised into the belief that really loving someone is the highest thing you can do, and men less so.
“Men, I enjoy writing about them,” she says. “The kind of dangerous charisma of the oppressor class.”
Her final line gets even more laughter than McHugh’s one about GAA shorts.
Rooney’s most recent book is Intermezzo, but on Tuesday, most people in Galway’s Town Hall are carrying well-thumbed copies of Normal People, her second novel.
This year, Cúirt International Festival of Literature marks its 40th anniversary. For its opening one-hour event, Rooney and poet Paul Muldoon have been paired together for a reading. Rooney now seldom does public events, or appears at festivals, but at Cúirt this week she does two.
Both have sold out long in advance. There is a crush in the lobby as people wait to enter the auditorium. Among them are friends Emma Hickey from Westmeath, and Sammi Rogers from California, both students of the MA in creative writing at University College Galway.
“A lot of her work captures difficulties other Irish people have with communication,” says Hickey. “She is so well known among the younger crowd.”
“Normal People was my first introduction to a book told through dialogue,” says Rogers.
Inside the auditorium, festival director Manuela Moser requests that no photographs be taken during the performance. The single official photograph subsequently released to the media from her two Cúirt appearances, which feature Rooney and Muldoon on stage, has obviously been taken in advance, as the two authors are never on stage together during the event. They each do a reading separately, and then leave the stage.
During her introduction, Moser also says Rooney will sign books for 45 minutes after the event. (There is no mention of any defined signing time for Paul Muldoon.) There is no audience Q&A at either of her two events.
Ruolin Li, who first read Normal People at her home in Beijing, says “Sally Rooney is the reason why I wanted to come to Ireland to study
Rooney arrives first from within the wings. Right away, I see at least three violations of the no-pictures request happen around me, as audience members discreetly angle their phones at the stage; moths to the unique Sally Rooney flame of fame.
“Thank you so much for coming out here this evening,” says Rooney. “It’s an honour to be back at Cúirt. I’m delighted to be here on the opening night; it’s a special anniversary year.” She speaks quickly, with energy and warmth. In her hand is her own copy of Intermezzo, published last September. “Not so new, but still kind of new,” as she says, waving it in the air.
She goes on to read three short extracts from Intermezzo, each featuring a different key character. After only a couple of minutes it becomes evident that among Rooney’s many gifts, she is a superb reader of her own work. The swift, confident, supple rendition of her characters and their dialogue makes for an immersive and highly entertaining experience, with audience members laughing at length intermittently.
“You’re spoiling me, thank you,” she says, hand on heart, following sustained applause when she has finished reading the second of the three extracts.
There is an organised scrum in the lobby post-event, with books for sale at Charlie Byrne’s bookshop table being snatched up by those who have not brought their own copies, not thinking Rooney would be doing a signing.
In the snaking queue is Norwegian Julie Paulsen, who has travelled from Florence specifically for the two Rooney events. Normal People and Intermezzo are her favourite novels. “She captures our generation really well. Especially everything that goes on in the quiet; during pauses in a conversation, or during a look.”
“Normal People brought Sally Rooney into my world,” says Patricia Hegarty, who runs the @TheGalwayBookNook Instagram account, where she posts about the books she loves to read. “Nobody does tension like Sally Rooney, including sexual tension in relationships.”
Ruolin Li, who first read Normal People at her home in Beijing, says “Sally Rooney is the reason why I wanted to come to Ireland to study. She described student life in Trinity, and the lives of Irish students really fascinated me.” Li is now studying computer science in the University of Limerick.
With Li is her partner, George Avery from Waterford. The couple met through mutual friends after Li arrived in Ireland. “It’s true to say we wouldn’t have met without Sally Rooney, and had our own love story,” says Avery.
I stop someone on their way out of the Town Hall, and ask to see what has been written in their book at the signing. “For Elisa, with warmest best wishes, Sally Rooney,” reads the inscription, in small careful script. “She got my name right,” says Elisa. “People usually misspell it.”
“Anyone for Paul Muldoon?” a volunteer calls at one point to the many remaining people in the queue, indicating to the desk where the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet is also set up to sign books. Nobody stirs.
Cúirt festival continues until April 13th
