NEA: AQA (A); Edexcel; OCR
Sally Rooney has been called ‘the first great Millennial author’ by the New York Times (Barry 2018) and the ‘Salinger for the Snapchat generation’ by Faber. Her fiction encapsulates late adolescence and young adulthood with freshness and precision, revealing the central paradox of modern life: despite having more ways to communicate, it is harder than ever to connect. Indeed, Rooney evokes almost 50 shades of awkwardness. Her million-copy bestselling novel Normal People (2018) has become a critically acclaimed television mini-series and is an increasingly popular choice for NEA assignments. This article explores how Rooney renders contemporary life in that novel, before considering what it has in common with Regency romance.
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