How Sally became Castlebar’s megastar

IRISH literature has a long tradition of producing writers who capture the mood of the times that we live in. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a classic searing satire of Georgian Britain’s greed and moral bankruptcy. In every era writers have emerged from Erin’s shores as voices who have been able to chronicle the experiences of a generation and articulate their concerns.

In the past decade, Sally Rooney has become the voice of the Irish millennial generation with her multimillion selling books including her breakthrough novel the award-winning Normal People. Yet such is her ability to write about the lives of young people born in the 21st century has meant she has also gathered a worldwide readership. Rooney has massive fanbases in the US and in China where her books consistently top the best seller lists. So influential are her novels, they have broken through the boundary of being excellent literature and moved into the realms of global cultural commentary.

The Mayo-born writer has become essential reading for anyone seeking to find out how young people live and think in the first decades of the new millennium. Yet the young novelist—like so many Irish writers—did not come from the well-heeled areas such as Dublin’s Donnybrook, but from Castlebar in Mayo. Nevertheless, it is her ability to observe with the keen eye of the outsider the cultural developments that are happening in Ireland’s capital and beyond that has made her the voice of her generation.

Early years

Sally Rooney was born on February 20, 1991, in Castlebar, County Mayo. She was the middle child of Kieran and Marie. Her father worked as a Telecom Éireann engineer, and her mother ran a local arts centre in Mayo. Her parents were committed socialists, and their political influence was to have an important impact in shaping the work and life of the young Rooney. Like so many creative and clever young people the attraction of studying at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) meant that Sally would leave Mayo for the capital.

On her arrival at Trinity in 2011, Rooney’s star immediately began to make its meteoric rise. In her second year, she was elected a Scholar of the faculty, an accolade that neither Oscar Wilde nor Samuel Beckett were able to attain during their time at TCD. Not content with being a Scholar at Ireland’s most prestigious university, Rooney, still only 20, won the prize of Top Debater at the European Universities Debating Championships. In 2015, she wrote an essay ‘Even If You Beat Me’ about her experience of winning the European Debating Championship.

Her essay was seen by a literary agent who asked her if she had any other material. When she sent him the manuscript of her first novel Conversations with Friends (2017), her literary career took off. The novel is set in Dublin and centres around the romantic entanglement of the four main characters. The novel was critically acclaimed, winning Wales’s prestigious Dylan Thomas Literary Prize. At only 26, Rooney had firmly made her mark on the literary map in the Ireland and internationally. However, it was with her second novel Normal People that Mayo writer would become a global phenomenon among young millennials.

Anything but normal writing

The novel’s plot centres around two young millennials from Sligo. Marianne is from a well-to-do family, yet is a social outcast in school, and Connell, a poor, but popular, academically gifted Gaelic footballer. In their last year of school, they begin their secretive relationship. Their relationship ends badly partly because Connell’s head is turned by the most popular girl in school, whose smalltown star status eclipse’s Marianne the gawky outsider. When they both leave rural Sligo for Trinity the tables are turned as Connell becomes the awkward rural outsider and the middle-class Marianne finds her cultural tribe.

The global literary and TV success of Normal People partly lies in that it speaks to young millennials and the world that they inhabit. However, Rooney’s writing also draws on a rich Irish tradition. In the characters of Marianne and Connell and their story, there are echoes of James Joyce’s The Dead, widely acknowledged as the best short story ever committed to paper. In the novel we travel with Marianne on her odyssey through Dublin and abroad, with men who are full of sophisticated personality, but of little character. Throughout the story, it is Connell—the untamed genius from the West of Ireland—that Marianne truly loves. A young man for all his innocent insecurities, has the strength to be gentle.

Like all great Irish love stories, its ending leaves us with a sense of heartache yet hope for the young couple. America beckons with writing opportunities for Connell, while Marianne chooses to stay in Dublin and we are left wondering if they will reunite. The novel was awarded countless literary prizes including ‘Irish Novel of the Year’ in 2018. The BBC’s 12-part adaptation of the book won four Emmys and launched the career of Paul Mescal, playing Connell. At the tender age of 27, Rooney’s work had become a worldwide media phenomenon and she was widely viewed as the voice of her generation. Yet she has chosen to use her position as the voice of the millennials to speak for those others have attempted to silence.

Royalties and Palestine

Her bestseller books and the screen adaptations of her work means that Rooney’s royalties are in the millions. Yet the self-professed socialist has chosen to give her vast literary rights to supporting the rights of the Palestinians. She has also used her media profile to speak out against what the United Nations have described as the genocide of the Palestinian people. She accused the UK Government of providing ‘state support for genocide’ and has been vocal in her support of Palestine Action commenting that: “Those brave enough to break the law in protest.. deserve our highest respect.”

Her support for Palestine Action has meant she has been unable and unwilling to speak at future public events in the UK for fear of arrest. Like her northern compatriots Kneecap, Rooney is at the forefront in shining a light on the British State putting the pound sterling before people. Their literary forefather Oscar Wilde summed up the cynicism of British ruling classes when he observed that they are people: “...who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” The proudly Irish Rooney, though, clearly knows that valued principles do not have a price.

The beautiful world of Dublin

Her 2021 book Beautiful World, Where Are You describes the lives of young Dubliner millennials as they negotiate work, relationships and coming of age. In this, her third novel, Dublin itself is not merely a backdrop, but a character and its cityscape shapes its citizens. Describing living in Dublin as ‘everything happens face-to-face, I mean on an equal footing. True no one is looking down on you all from a great height. But it gives the sky a position of total dominance.’ Like Joyce who captured the essence of Dublin in the early 20th century, Rooney paints a picture of the city in the 21st. Dublin for all its cosmopolitan sophistication and status as a world city, still has Erin’s sky above it reminding it that it is Irish.

Not only does the book beautifully depict Dublin, it also skilfully describes the difficulties that mobile-obsessed millennials have in forming real relationships. Alice, one of the main characters, tells her friend via email about her internet dating experience with acidic accuracy: “I went out on a date with someone who worked in a shipping warehouse and absolutely despised him. To be fair to myself, I think I have forgotten how to conduct social intercourse.” Her depiction of the date and its aftermath is an event that many young millennials can identify with in our post-Covid times.

Voice of the millennials

In this book and her others, a key element of Rooney’s global success is she able to describe the lives of tens of millions of young people with such accuracy. This is the generation who are highly educated, but many of them work in temporary low paid jobs, who spend a disproportionate amount of the earnings paying rent and are unable to get on the housing ladder. Academics term this new social class as the Precariat. In this novel and in her other writing, Rooney shows a uniquely Irish ability to tell a good story, yet she has also been able to give The Precariat generation a voice which speaks to them on a global stage. The book was hailed by the New York Times as being her best book so far and in 2021 it won the book of the year at Irish Book Awards.

Home is where the heart is

Such is Sally Rooney’s global status that she could live anywhere in the world, never write again and still live off her royalties. Yet she has chosen to live in her hometown of Castlebar with her husband John Prasifka who is a high school Maths teacher. The couple met whilst studying at Trinity. She is active in her town and frequently campaigns on local issues affecting Castlebar. She clearly lives by the socialist principles that her parents instilled in her. Yet her modest life should not distract us from her immense literary achievements.

At only 34 Rooney has made her mark as a literary heavyweight who chronicles the lives of young Irish millennials. However, her writing goes beyond mere fashionable trends. Her novels are not only page turners with inventive plots filled with complex characters but are also cultural chronicles of our age. When we want to understand the Victorian hypocrisy of the English upper classes we turn to Oscar Wilde. When we come to look back on how young people negotiated and lived their lives in the early 21st century we will read Rooney. Sally Rooney the literary megastar from Castlebar.

Dr David McKinstry is a teacher and poet whose poems are widely published and broadcast across Ireland and in the UK. If any readers wish to share their literary output with him, they can contact him at: davmick38h@yahoo.co.uk