Sally Rooney Doesn't Want Her Third Novel Adapted for TV

By Emma Chance | TV | September 24, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | TV | September 24, 2024 |

Finally, I have the chance to tell you my thoughts on Sally Rooney novels. I think of them like this: you know when you’re watching a reality show, and someone’s saying something in a confessional, and you’re listening to them and you’re following what they’re saying and you’re thinking, Yeah, I’m with you, seems reasonable, and then they go to a party and the person they’ve been having conflict with is there and they throw a drink in their face and you’re like, Wait, what about what we talked about back there? What happened?!

That’s what it feels like to read a Sally Rooney novel. Seventy percent of them are interior monologue, and while that’s happening you’re like, Okay, I can relate. And then the characters start interacting with each other and they’re all bumbling fools, and you’re like, Huh?? All of this to say, I was surprised when the frenzy for the novels (a frenzy I was also surprised by) led to television adaptations. To me, the Normal People mini-series was, predictably, a whole lot of two hot Irish people staring at each other longingly and then shrugging instead of saying how they feel.

Rooney was involved in writing the Normal People adaptation, but only executive produced the adaptation of her debut novel, Conversations with Friends. Now, she says “that world was not where I belonged.”

“The experience of working on [Normal People] had been, in so many ways, amazing—the team of people involved in it, but it did also feel like a really big job. Then, when the show was broadcast, that felt like a lot in terms of the amount of discourse that it generated and the amount of media attention. I felt like, OK, now I know that my books are where I belong, and that’s all I want to be doing.”

So, she isn’t accepting offers for her third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, because she’d rather “take a break from [TV].” Her fourth novel, Intermezzo, comes out today, September 24th.