The Routledge Companion to Sally Rooney

Angelos Bollas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040354223
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Routledge Companion to Sally Rooney offers an in-depth examination of one of the most influential contemporary Irish authors, Sally Rooney, offering valuable insights into her writing and its socio-cultural significance.

This comprehensive collection brings together contributions from international scholars who explore Rooney's novels through a range of interdisciplinary lenses, including literary studies, gender theory, political analysis, and cultural criticism. The book provides critical insights into Rooney's exploration of millennial identity, class dynamics, relationships, and the evolving role of technology in shaping human connections. By situating Rooney's work within both the global context and post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, the collection presents a nuanced understanding of her literary impact.

The Routledge Companion to Sally Rooney is essential reading for academics and students studying contemporary Irish literature. The volume not only highlights the significance of Rooney's work in contemporary literature but also expands on its sociopolitical relevance, making it an indispensable resource for understanding her cultural impact.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Spatial De-turn? (Non)representation of Place and Emerging Spaces in Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You
• 3 “An Intimacy as Close as Between the Sea and the Strand”: The Boundary between World and Body in Sally Rooney’s Normal People
• 4 A Feminist Reading of Sally Rooney’s Novels Conversations with Friends, Normal People, and Beautiful World, Where Are You?
• 5 “Inside of a Glass Jar”: Visibilising Insidious Trauma in Conversations with Friends
• 6 (De)Constructing Masculinities in Sally Rooney’s Novel Normal People and TV Series Adaptation
• 7 Vulnerability and Female Sexuality in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends (2017) and Normal People (2018): Agent, Doer or Sufferer?
• 8 Queer World, Where Are You?: The Im/Possibility of Queer Love in Sally Rooney’s Novels
• 9 Identity, Sociality and Love in Sally Rooney’s Normal People: Exploring the Tensions Between Philosophies of Authenticity, Ethics and Community
• 10 The Ethics of Vulnerability and Relationality in a Collapsing World in Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You
• 11 ‘I Loved When He Was Available to Me Like This’: Modernisation and (Mis)Communication
• 12 Intimacy in Sally Rooney’s Novels: ‘Being Alone with Her is Like Opening a Door Away from Normal Life and Then Closing It Behind Them’
• 13 Sex and Space in Contemporary Ireland: The Vicissitudes of Intimacy in Normal People
• 14 Thoughtful Faces and Sleek Bodies: Thinness and the Politics of Consumption in the Fiction of Sally Rooney
• 15 “It was Just Period Pain”: Endometriosis as a Marker of Sexual Difference and Desirability in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends
• 16 A Transmodern Reading of Sally Rooney’s Normal People: Millennial Vulnerabilities and the Paradox of Interconnectedness
• 17 Bleeding in the Pews: Partial Faith in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends and Beautiful World, Where Are You
• 18 Changing Spaces in the Anthropocene: Solastalgia and the Search for Hope in Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You
• 19 “There Are a Lot of White People Here”: Race, Class and Relationality in the Screen Adaptations of Normal People and Conversations with Friends
• 20 Hegemonic and Vulnerable Masculinities in Sally Rooney’s Normal People
• 21 Sally Rooney’s Novels: The Aesthetics of the Contemporary Irish Bildungsroman
• 22 The Dark Turn of Chick Lit in Sally Rooney’s Works
• Index