It is always good to find someone who shares your own views about, well almost anything really, but inevitably I am thinking about books here. I have said before that I really don’t rate the writing of Sally Rooney and will certainly not be buying, or reading, her new book ‘Intermezzo’.
The reviewer and critic Claire Lowdon, in last week’s Spectator, stylishly wrote of her problems with Rooney’s hugely popular output, now of course on television as well as between hard covers. She says: ‘ There is a wider than usual gulf between the writer Rooney wants to be and the writer she actually is.’ How true.
The article is accompanied by a moody, grey picture of Sally Rooney in the offices of Faber in London. She is obviously making them a load of money and I’m pleased about that as Faber is one of the few publishing houses to have avoided being gobbled up by conglomerates, mainly American.
Lowdon continues: ‘Rooney is marketed as an intellectual, and a serious novelist, and her novels display the trappings of literary seriousness.’ One of these trappings would be the entire lack of speech marks, which to me simply feels pretentious. The reviewer continues: ‘ if you approach her work expecting high literature, you are bound to be disappointed, even scornful.’ (That is me) ‘ But if you put on the kettle and cosy up for an old fashioned love story, then you might just find yourself having a good time.’ My problem with that is there are far, far better stories with which to cosy up.
However, very many thanks Claire Lowdon for the validation that I am not alone in my (strong) views about the writing of Sally Rooney.