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What's Making Me Happy

I think Sally Rooney is not yet thirty, and I'm exasperated that she is already as wise as she is. Some lingering thoughts from "Normal People":

*Rooney understands--and many writers don't really get this--that a maker of fiction needs to raise questions. That's all. The storyteller's job isn't to answer questions, just to raise them. So, for example: Rooney's protagonist, a novelist and a Marxist, wonders what the real point of fiction-writing is. Is it really worthwhile to give someone (often a wealthy person) a brief imaginary emotional experience? Are there better things to do with one's energy? This question is raised, and then it haunts you. Period.

*Rooney resists explanations and happy endings. We understand that there is substantial trauma in Marianne's family; we know people are unwell, despite all the money in this family. (And isn't that just like life? Money is nice, but it won't always protect you.) But we never really get a full picture of why Marianne's brother behaves the way he does. We just see Marianne reacting in terror when her (pained, lifelike) brother is terrifying. This feels wrenching, and also it feels totally ordinary. It feels like something we might encounter in our own lives. We're not reading about serial killers and terrorists. Just everyday pain.

(Rooney quotes Margaret Drabble: "Of course I'm narrating ordinary experience. Ordinary experience is fascinating, in a bottomless way. Why would I ever want to write about anything else?")

*Rooney knows that people behave in ways that aren't generally consistent or rational. When the lovers seem to separate at the end, we want to shout, NO! NO! PLEASE DON'T! PLEASE COMPROMISE!

But we also understand why these people are leaning toward the choices they're leaning toward.

And Rooney captures something moving about love (whether or not the love is doomed): Marianne understands that the pain she'll feel in isolation is different from the pain she has felt most of her life. She won't feel the pain of worthlessness; she'll now feel the pain of loneliness. Connell has helped her discover a sense of worth--simply by taking an interest in her, for many years. This is what people can do for each other. (Does that seem bleak? It's a bleak ending. But also a weirdly buoyant ending.)

There's an old chestnut: All you need for fiction is a He and a She. But it's so hard to get two (seemingly) living, breathing people onto the page. Rooney achieves this. Her work is quietly iconoclastic--and, as Curtis Sittenfeld has said, it's "superb and magical."

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