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Downsizing Sally Rooney’s millennial autofiction into a one-minute fix.

Michael Bird
Feedback Manager, Bandit Fiction

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Close friends Eileen and Alice have classy jobs in the arts sector in Ireland, but while Eileen is an editorial assistant on shit pay for a literary magazine, Alice is a best-selling novelist with a million Euro in the bank. 

Both are always angsty, confused about their role in the world, and unsure what they want from relationships, or if they want relationships at all. While Eileen hooks up with her childhood pal Simon, who’s a political consultant in Dublin, Alice goes steady with a Tinder date Felix, a foreman in a warehouse.

Sally Rooney’s follow-up to the mega-hit Normal People is a self-reflexive romance about smart and pretty millennials trying to fix the planet’s problems while making pasta sauce, drinking wine and shopping at Ikea.

This 350-page exploration into weltschmerz on the Liffey may be self-indulgent, humourless, and lacking any structure beyond the paradigm of girl-meets-boy, but it’s also a frank introspection into the soul of a publicity-shy artist. Whether you love or hate this book, you can’t deny that every line sings with truth.

Here’s all you need to know:

Fin.

Which literary classics should we memeify next? Follow us on Twitter @BanditFiction and we’ll turn your favourite works of literature into expressions of our modern world.

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