Sally Rooney was born in the west of Ireland in 1991. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta and The London Review of Books. Winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, she is the author of Conversations with Friends. In 2019, she was named to the inaugural Time 100 Next list.
Praise for Conversations with Friends:
A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week
Vogue’s 10 Best Books of 2017
Slate’s 10 Favorite Books of the Year
Elle’s Best Books of the Year
The Cut’s Best Books by Women
Vulture's "Best New Paperbacks"
“A writer of rare confidence, with a lucid, exacting style…
[O]ne wonderful aspect of Rooney’s consistently wonderful novel is
the fierce clarity with which she examines the self-delusion that
so often festers alongside presumed self-knowledge… But Rooney’s
natural power is as a psychological portraitist. She is acute and
sophisticated about the workings of innocence; the protagonist of
this novel about growing up has no idea just how much of it she has
left to do.”
– The New Yorker
“Rooney has the gift of imbuing everyday life with a sense of high
stakes…a novel of delicious frictions.”
– New York Magazine
“I love debuts where you just can’t believe that it was a
debut… Conversations with Friends paints a nuanced,
page-turning portrait of a whip-smart university student in the
throes of an affair with an older married man.”
– Zadie Smith, Elle
“The dialogue is superb, as are the insights about communicating in
the age of electronic devices. Rooney has a magical ability to
write scenes of such verisimilitude that even when little happens
they’re suspenseful.”
– Curtis Sittenfeld, The Week
“Sharp, funny, thought-provoking . . . a really great portrait of
two young women as they’re figuring out how to be adults.”
– Celeste Ng, "Late Night with Seth Meyers Podcast"
“This book. This book. I read it in one day. I hear I'm not
alone.”
– Sarah Jessica Parker (Instagram)
“The self-deceptions of a new generation are at the core of Sally
Rooney’s debut, Conversations With Friends (Hogarth), which
captures something wonderfully odd-cornered and real in the story
of an Irish millennial…”
– Megan O'Grady, Vogue's 10 Best Books of 2017
“The debut novel of a young Irish writer whose forthcoming novel
Normal People earned her rave reviews and a Booker Prize
nomination, Conversations With Friends is one of those campus
novels in which all of the real education takes place off campus.
When two young women, best friends but former lovers, become
friendly with an older married couple, their lives intertwine and
explode in a coming-of-age story that’s weightier and wiser than
you might expect.”
– Maris Kreizman, Vulture's "Best New Paperbacks" column
"[A] bracing, miraculous debut."
– The Millions
“Sally Rooney’s debut novel is a remarkably charming exploration of
that very uncharming subject: the human ego…Conversations With
Friends sparkles with controlled rhetoric. But it ends up
emphasizing the truths exploding in the silences.”
– Slate
“In this searing, insightful debut, Rooney offers an unapologetic
perspective on the vagaries of relationships… a treatise on married
life, the impact of infidelity, the ramifications of one’s actions,
and how the person one chooses to be with can impact one’s
individuality. Throughout, Rooney’s descriptive eye lends beauty
and veracity to this complex and vivid story.”
– Publishers Weekly (starred)
“Readers who enjoyed Belinda McKeon's Tender and Caitriona Lally's
Eggshells will enjoy this exceptional debut."
– Library Journal (starred)
"A smart, sexy, realistic portrayal of a woman finding
herself."
– Booklist (starred)
“An astonishing assured debut.”
– The Bookseller
"The book of the summer...the wider issues underscoring her book –
including race, sex and gender – which in her careful treatment,
emerge far more complex and often funnier, than we could have ever
imagined."
– Refinery29
"A very funny, very humanly messy tale of sexual and artistic
self-discovery in which every page reveals shrewd emotional
insight. Caught between laser-eyed irony and heart-melting
sincerity, the book is a masterclass in narrative tone that left me
desperate to read whatever Rooney writes next... An addictive,
funny and truthful first novel about love and literature."
– Metro
“[Sally] Rooney has managed to take something old, the romance
novel, and make it new: Frances is a bisexual communist student,
allergic to expressing emotion, and her love affair is with a
married man, and yet the book makes no attempt to make a moral
stand on fidelity or punish its characters for their passions. The
effect is, frankly, riveting, and creates a peculiar sensation of
danger…An addictive read.”
– Rufi Thorpe, author of The Girls From Corona del Mar and Dear
Fang, With Love
"Sally Rooney's writing is cool, wry and smooth, and gives the
reader a sense of being in the lucky position of overhearing not
only what fascinating strangers are talking about, but also what
they're thinking. I was riveted til the last page."
– Emily Gould, author of Friendship
"Fascinating, ferocious and shrewd. Sally Rooney has the
sharpest eye for all of the most delicate cruelties of human
interaction."
– Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies (winner
of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction)
“[Sally] Rooney captures the mood and voice of contemporary women
and their interpersonal connections and concerns without being
remotely predictable…A clever and current book about a complicated
woman and her romantic relationships.”
- Kirkus
"Rooney writes so well of the condition of being a young, gifted
but self-destructive woman, both the mentality and physicality of
it. She is alert to the invisible bars imprisoning the apparently
free. Though herself young – she was born in 1991 – she has already
been shortlisted for this year’s Sunday Times EFG short
story award. Her hyperarticulate characters may fail to communicate
their fragile selves, but Rooney does it for them in a voice
distinctively her own."
- The Guardian
"A novelist to watch: An addictive debut, with nods to Tender is
the Night, heralds a bright new talent."
- Sunday Times
“A contemporary love story so powerful, graceful and honest it left
me reeling. [Conversations with Friends] is, by turns, astonishing,
heart-rending and perfect; there's not a word out of place.”
– Luke Kennard, author of The Transition
"Sally Rooney is a writer going all the way to the top.
Conversations with Friends features the 21st century, Irish
descendents of Salinger's guileless wiseasses brought to life in
prose as taut and coolly poised as early Bret Easton Ellis."
– Colin Barrett, author of Young Skins
"There's not a beat out of place in Sally Rooney’s astonishingly
poised writing. Conversations with Friends is the most
sophisticated and perceptive novel I've read about relationships in
the 2010s."
– Gavin Corbett, author of This Is The Way and Green Glowing
Skull
"Written with such precision and perceptiveness, full of arid
humour and reckless despair, a novel of spine-tingling
salience."
– Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither and winner of
the 2015 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
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