Sally Rooney entered the literary scene in 2017 with her debut novel Conversations with friendsbut she only became really famous with the adaptation of her second novel, Normal peoplewith Daisy Edgar Jones and Paul Mescal. Normal people became a must-see Hulu series during lockdown, giving the book a boom in popularity. In 2021, she published her latest novel, Beautiful world, where are you, and the following year she scored a second BBC series adaptation for Conversations with friends, with Joe Alwyn in the lead role. Now her fourth novel, Intermezzo, is scheduled to be released on September 24th.
Fans have been eagerly awaiting this new novel after a long hiatus. While Rooney’s novels have dealt extensively with themes such as complex romantic love, friendship and fame, intermezzo promises additional insight into grief and the complications of family relationships. The novel is about two brothers trying to connect beyond the devastating loss of their father, and the love relationships that become intertwined in their lives during this turbulent time.
To survive the long summer before intermezzoHere are ten books perfect for fans of any or all of Rooney’s previous books, coming out in September.
The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue
Caroline O’Donoghue’s latest novel The Rachel Incident is often compared to Rooney’s work. There are some superficial similarities, as O’Donoghue is also an Irish writer telling a story set during and after university, but they also have complementary writing styles that, while different, should appeal to readers looking for thoughtful reflections on young adult life. Rachel is finishing her English degree and lives in Cork, Ireland, in a house on Shandon Street with her best friend James. She works in a bookshop and ponders her future prospects in the face of the 2010 recession. During her time on Shandon Street, James navigates a tumultuous romantic relationship with an older man, while Rachel takes a much more internal journey, learning to assert herself and find her path in life. O’Donoghue’s style places a lot of emphasis on subtle nuances and the small interactions that ultimately change everything. Rooney is a popular point of comparison to sell books these days, but The Rachel Incident really deserves the badge.
Conversations about love by Natasha Lunn
A non-fiction title may seem like a strange suggestion, Conversations about love is thematically relevant to Rooney’s novels. Messy love relationships are often at the heart of Rooney’s work, as are threads of complicated friendships. Ultimately, she is concerned with how much love still matters in the face of a bleak world. Lunn’s collection of essays, which brings together voices from a wide range of authors and experts, is the perfect place to delve deeper into a serious consideration of love. While romantic love is often the focus – and this is where the collection begins – the book gives a much broader picture of what love can be. There are essays on found family and friendship, familial love, and the side effects of loving, such as grief. Conversations about love looks at the subject from every possible angle, paying attention to the details that Rooney’s fans will appreciate.
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel is already a literary gem. Although this is Akbar’s first novel, he is already an accomplished poet, which is evident in the effortless lyrical quality of his prose. Like Rooney’s novels, Martyr! invites you to read with a highlighter in hand. Cyrus feels stuck in life in his mid-twenties while working on his addiction recovery and a sluggish career as a poet. Although he doesn’t care about his life, he wants his death to have meaning, so he begins researching and writing about historical martyrs. Eventually, he travels to New York City to meet an artist who is spending the end of her life as a museum exhibit. As Cyrus embarks on this quest, he is forced to delve into his family history and his Iranian roots, connecting to a sense of identity and finding meaning. If you identified with the feeling of being in Beautiful world, where are you, Martyr! considers a similar search for a rooted connection.
Wellness by Nathan Hill
While Wellness may seem like a strange comparison to Rooney’s usually short novels, it is the perfect book to prepare you for Intermezzo’s stunning leap in length to 464 pages. In addition, Hill has a talent for showing the enormous complexity and idiosyncrasies of people. This sprawling novel tells the story of Jack and Elizabeth, both as a couple and through their separate coming-of-age stories in small Midwestern towns. Jack and Elizabeth meet in Chicago as they watch each other through neighboring apartment windows, and Wellness follows them as they become parents and navigate middle age. Rooney and Hill both make a point of highlighting the inherent contradictions of human nature, writing novels that are even more magnificent upon closer inspection.
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter
Rooney writes with an awareness of the cultural and political events happening around her. Ripe exists entirely in the grimmer aspects of the culture. There’s a deep cynicism in Cassie’s portrayal of her life working at a Silicon Valley tech start-up in the run-up to the Covid-19 pandemic. Cassie is stuck with a boyfriend who can never commit to her, a mind-numbing job, news of a pregnancy she definitely doesn’t want, and a black hole of depression swirling devotedly above her head. While Etter doesn’t offer an optimistic view of life in early twenty-something America, she does offer catharsis and an undeniable voice that makes the book easy to devour. Beautiful world, where are you ends with the beginning of the pandemic and Ripe increases the tension by placing the narrative on the uncertain precipice of the pandemic just before quarantine.
Death Valley by Melissa Broder
Melissa Broder is famous for her surrealist interpretation of contemporary literary novels. She uses outlandish premises or details to get to the quieter interpersonal stories behind them. Similar to Beautiful world, where are you, Death Valley focuses on a writer who has retreated from her normal life to focus on her writing. The narrator checks into a Best Western in the desert outside of LA, where she hopes to escape the burden of her father’s hospitalization in intensive care. There, she finds a hiking trail with a magical cactus. She crawls inside and hallucinates various scenarios involving important figures from her life. Over the course of the short novel, Broder forces the narrator to rethink her entire perspective on life and death.
After you left by Maggie O’Farrell
Irish writer Maggie O’Farrell is best known for her recent novels Hamnet And The marriage portraitbut her debut novel After you lefthas the most in common with Rooney’s work. O’Farrell’s lyrical prose creates a beautiful impressionistic painting on the page, but it is the totality of the portrait that the reader is left with at the end of the novel that makes this book truly impressive. While Normal people extends over several years, After you left reaches even further through time. After Alice falls into a coma, O’Farrell pieces together her life story by spinning through time – with flashbacks to her parents’ first meeting and Alice’s childhood, then showing her adult life before the accident. This fragmented, sprawling coming-of-age novel can trigger an existential crisis.
Great Swiss by Jen Beagin
Connell and Marianne will forever be remembered by their connection in Normal peopleand while Great Swiss approaches an important connection from a very different angle. Greta’s life is shaped significantly by the woman she first meets as Big Swiss. Greta lives in a run-down, bee-infested farmhouse where she transcribes therapy sessions for an eccentric psychologist. She is fascinated by one of his clients, whom she calls Big Swiss. However, since it is a small town, the two eventually meet, and Greta builds a relationship with this mysterious client without revealing her uncomfortable one-sided connection. And how Conversations with friendswill make the reader think about how ethics comes into play in matters of the heart.
SEE ALSO: 10 queer books by queer authors you should pick up before Pride Month ends
Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados
For all Conversations with friends Fans, Happy Hour is a must-read. Frances and Bobbi form a dynamic duo that is hot and cold at times, and Gala and Isa from this novel are the perfect counterparts. As young twenty-somethings, Gala and Isla try to make their way through a summer abroad in New York City by taking odd jobs under the table and exploiting their dubious connections. Their friendship, which seems strong at first, is constantly tested as they navigate the harsh realities of the city. Much like Florence and Bobbi’s free-spirited summer with the married writer-actor couple, Happy Hour deals with the deeper consequences of a seemingly carefree life.
The idiot by Elif Batuman
For all who had dealings with Marianne from Normal people A bit too much, The idiot is a perfect next read. Selin also sees herself as an outsider as she begins her first year at Harvard. Selin must navigate life away from home, new social dynamics, and the increasingly confusing reality of the situation. The reader closely follows her daily life in 1995, moving from the Harvard campus to her summer study abroad in France, Hungary, and Turkey. At its core The idiot is about a similar struggle to many of Rooney’s books, in which Selin tries to find a comfortable place in her newly adult life.
