Oh my gosh, Sally Rooney’s new book is out today!
I bet everyone already knew that.
How do I know that when I barely remember the day of the week these days?
Oh God. Because of this tweet:
Oh NAAAUUUR he reviewed it too!
Should I read the review?
No, then I’ll want to buy it. I don’t want to buy a hardcover.
Why can’t they just sell a paperback alongside the hardcover like they do in the UK?
I hate that everyone is excited. I hate that everyone already loves her and is obsessed. I chalk this up to getting the UK paperback version from my then-local bookshop which always had a secret stash of British books.
I miss my old local bookshop…even if my new local bookshop is full of much nicer people.
Because I got an early UK copy of the book, I got it in, I think, September or early October 2018. The book published in April 2019 in the US.
The US media response to her book crushed me, honestly. I’m still crushed.
One of my closest friends recommended her books to me. I read Conversations with Friends in July 2018. I recommended her books to my closest friends. I lent them my copies. We talked about our personal traumas, about love and reactions to love, because of these books. I was friends with a couple and they both read the book, and we had an in depth conversation about Helen because I was shocked at her response to the funeral.
I had to reread Conversations with Friends like 3 or 4 times because the first time I took everything Frances said about herself and her relationships as truth, rather than low self-esteem. I didn’t realize how deeply people could lie to themselves, and I didn’t understand how to see through those lies.
I asked everyone what their thoughts were on the book because I wanted to know their reactions. But I also wanted to know what they thought about the lies.
The way people wrote about Normal People crushed me because it was all so…political. But worse, it was never personal. The book felt so personal to me and it felt like no one cared what my thoughts were because I wasn’t important enough.
That’s not true. I was dating someone at the time and he had a friend in Europe get me a copy that was signed by Sally Rooney.
Too bad I broke up with him before he could give it to me.
I wonder if he ended up with that Middle Eastern mathematician he met at a conference. He seemed to see her as a person first.
Anyway, I wish I’d had power in any area of the media world where someone would’ve let me write about my thoughts on the book. I pitched to one place and they gave me a rejection and it hurt too much to try again.
I mentioned in the pitch I made my ex read Sally Rooney and talked to my therapist about it. After the pitch was rejected, I felt so embarrassed that I had revealed that information to anyone.
The main people I saw writing about Sally Rooney were white women. I’m sure there are pieces out there by women of color. But I don’t know where they are. Is that my problem?
I wish it was normal practice for people to write personal essays in responses to books, instead of vague reviews.
Dammit, I bet BGT’s review is really good. Ugh.
Even just this tweet is destroying me.
Of course I’m become excited about her book again because people of color are talking about it.
How do I make it so I only hear people of color’s responses to it?
It’s not that I don’t want to hear about white people’s responses, I guess. I just don’t want to hear them anymore. Or only.
I also wish someone paid me to write about it but I think that’s less because I’m a person of color and more because I don’t have the right connections, haven’t written extensively about fiction, and am a big coward when it comes to writing personal essays that are too personal.
This sucks!!!
Why can’t things be easy. I wish someone would just send me a paperback version of the book.
I wonder if Sally Rooney has any brown friends?
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