Sally Rooney’s characters ask questions. Her politics only has rigid answers.

“Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.”― Sally Rooney, Normal PeopleIn the quiet, emotionally-fraught spaces of Irish author Sally Rooney’s novels, young people sit in cramped Dublin flats, scroll through instant messages, and struggle to bridge the terrifying distance between what they feel and what they are able to say. This core philosophy—a distinct trait of young people everywhere, especially Gen Z—is what made Rooney get the moniker of “voice of this generation”.Connell and Marianne, the protagonists of Normal People, are at their most vulnerable when they have the most to say to each other yet cannot find the words. They are intelligent and highly educated. They are also acutely conscious of social hierarchies that shape their lives. Yet they repeatedly misinterpret each other’s deepest needs.