Sally Rooney’s millennials are growing up

Rooney was in her twenties when she wrote Conversations with friends, what the young woman is talking about. Throughout her career, Rooney has been recognized as a millennial writer, with her novels focusing largely on characters in their 20s who came of age in the decade following the 2008 financial crisis. Her characters fall in love, quarrel with friends, achieve literary success and debate the relationship between politics and personal life. The characters of Rooney’s latest book, Beautiful world, where are you, they were discouraged about turning 30, even though they still struggled with many of the same fears.

Today, most millennials are well into their fourth decade of life Intermezzo, the young woman’s perspective is closed to us. We only see her relationship from the perspective of her older, almost boyfriend, Peter. Taking place immediately after the death of Peter’s father, it is Rooney’s bleakest novel: he is more attentive to what cannot be undone or regained, no longer convinced that success is just around the corner. Instead of dazzling, its heroes learn to make peace with the world. the novel itself, the longest of Rooney’s books, lacks the sparkle of her previous works: alongside the tension and momentum Conversations With Friends AND Normal people it feels loose and repetitive at times. Yet this looseness allows Rooney to show how power operates not only within relationships but also between them, tracing the interplay of romantic and familial bonds in the face of grief and loss.

Peter Koubek is a brilliant junior barrister based in Dublin. The young woman he dates is Naomi, a beautiful student facing eviction who sometimes makes money by posting explicit photos of herself online. But Peter is also in love with Sylvia, a brilliant academic (the main characters in Rooney’s novels are usually brilliant or beautiful, sometimes both). Peter and Sylvia met at university, where, like Rooney herself, they debated champions. Their relationship was blissfully happy until, at the age of 26, Sylvia was involved in a road accident that left her with chronic and often excruciating pain and the inability to engage in penetrative sex. Not long after the accident, Sylvia broke up with Peter, who has since had a parade of hot girlfriends, culminating with Naomi. Meanwhile, Sylvia and Peter are still best friends. When the novel begins, they have just begun to semi-virtuous share a bed.