When the series adaptation of Rooney’s second novel, Normal People, debuted on Hulu in 2020, Rooneymania blew up from literary phenomenon to full-blown cultural obsession-thanks in no small part to Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald’s masterful direction, an elegant script by Rooney and Alice Birch, and star-making performances from Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal as star-crossed lovers Marianne and Connell. Bobbi has a crush on Melissa, but Frances is inexorably drawn to Nick-a fascination that quickly gives way to an all-consuming affair. The book follows Frances and Bobbi, two college-aged best friends and ex-girlfriends, as they become intertwined in the marriage of an older couple named Nick and Melissa. A sort of literary touchstone for millennials (never mind the fact that the book’s protagonist is technically Gen Z), Irish author Sally Rooney’s debut novel overwhelmingly resonated with young women who have ever felt displaced, caught between chapters of their lives, overwhelmed by ill-advised love affairs, and alienated from their own bodies. Let me die.Suffice it to say that Conversations with Friends-the 2017 book on which the new series is based-captured the imaginations of readers everywhere.

I am obsessed with it I just want to read it all the time.” When Sophie asked who it was by and I told her it was an Irish writer called Sally Rooney who was born in 1991, her reply was “f*** off 1991.

Without saying hi, I sent her this: “You have to read this book I am reading. Take my WhatsApp chat with my friend Sophie from when the novel was first published in 2017. Online, you discuss life and death while you’re walking to the bus, you can shift topic with zero manoeuvring, and you can concede difficult things without having to look someone in the eye.

She gets how talking in a digital realm can be like endlessly whispering into your friend’s ear. Rooney was the first novelist to really nail the way that millennials speak to one another online, and it’s still one of the things I love most about her writing (yes, even those lengthy email exchanges in Beautiful World, Where Are You).

That sense of immediacy, of being inside Frances’s head, is intensified by the conversations that happen by text.

Rooney conversations with friends