Sally Rooney has been criticised for “glorifying eating disorders” in her books and “talking about how thin and white” her main characters often are.
The 33-year-old Irish author, who has written several successful works including Normal People and Conversations With Friends, has faced fresh backlash on social media.
The 33-year-old Irish author, who has written several successful works including Normal People and Conversations With Friends, has faced fresh backlash on social media.
“Sally Rooney writes female characters as if she’s slowly lost weight walking down the stairs,” wrote one.
Another joked: “I think Sally Rooney would scream if she saw a fat person.”
Sally Rooney has been criticised for “glorifying eating disorders” in her books and “talking about how thin and white her female characters tend to be”. Pictured is a scene from the television adaptation of Normal People
Writing in Fashion This week, journalist Emma Specter highlighted passages from Sally’s books that seemed to grab attention, including a scene in her latest Intermezzo, where the supporting characters are described as “small and portly” while the “live action, as always, focuses squarely on thin characters.”
She also referenced a moment in Conversations with Friends where Frances laments that her “bones still jut out unattractively on either side of her pelvis” and another passage in Normal People, in which Marianne shows “her pale collarbones like two white dashes.”
This is not the first time the writer has faced criticism for her depictions of thinness.
Posts from four years ago have talked about Sally’s “red scare levels” of glorification of eating disorders.
Others commented that while her writing is “great,” her books could “give someone an eating disorder.”
“Every Sally Rooney novel is like ‘the thin, pale girl who moved her tiny, fragile arms so delicately,'” said one.
Another added: ‘Sally Rooney described her characters as ‘Alice relaxed her thin frame and laid down the book limply, her bracelet jingling on her thin wrist as her bony legs relaxed.’
A third agreed: “Sally Rooney’s books are so provocative it’s like ‘I woke up today and sipped my black coffee delicately and delicately. I’m having a cigarette for lunch because I’m very emotionally complex and I’m gaunt. Did I mention I’m very thin and very pale?'”
The 33-year-old Irish author (pictured in 2019), who has written several successful works including Normal People and Conversations With Friends, has faced fresh backlash on social media.
X’s readers have criticised her writing style, suggesting she “romanticises” weight and unhealthy lifestyles with her overt body depictions, especially when it comes to women.
However, some felt that Sally’s descriptions should not be taken positively.
“Characters who skip meals and are thin in Sally Rooney’s novels also tend to be deeply unhappy, or even mentally ill,” wrote one. “Hope this helps!”
Another defended themselves: “Thinness is the default in fiction, so I find it strange that Sally Rooney gets told off for writing thin characters when her work isn’t actually fatphobic.”
FEMAIL has contacted Sally’s editors for comment.
This comes as Sally’s new book, Intermezzo, yesterday had fans lining up around the block as they waited to get their hands on her latest novel following its release.
After creating a cult following with a series of addictive and relatable novels, it seems Sally, a self-described Marxist originally from County Mayo, Ireland, has done it again with her latest novel.
Fans were seen queuing outside bookstores across the UK and Ireland today as they desperately sought to get their hands on the writer’s fourth release.
Posts from four years ago criticized Sally’s “red scare level” of glorification of eating disorders.
Dozens of stores, including London’s Book Bar, opened their doors exclusively at 8am, with a series of livestreams to meet demand.
A shop in Dublin, where the new book is set, was photographed with dozens of fans queuing up waiting for the doors to open.
Book Upstairs shared a post on social media saying they were “totally shocked” by the turnout.
Accompanying a photo of a packed bookshop, they wrote on social media: “So grateful to all these lovely early risers for choosing to shop independently and making this morning so wonderful. I have so much love for our Books Upstairs community. So excited!”
After securing a copy of the new release, fans sought shelter from the chilly September morning, as they were photographed enjoying a hot drink inside the Dublin bookstore.
However, some readers on social media felt that Sally’s descriptions should not be taken positively.
Meanwhile, in the U.K., fans lined up for early gates at dozens of venues across the country, scooping up tote bags, T-shirts, bookmarks and other merchandise being given away in some stores.
The London Book Bar offered exclusive t-shirts to its first 90 new arrivals, as well as signed editions from independent bookstores, personalised book covers and other gifts for early arrivals.
A crowd of young women crowded into the Waterstones store on Gower Street in London just as the sun was beginning to rise this morning. On its X-rated profile, the store revealed a large number of fans queuing outside the store.
Prior to its release, critics praised the new release, with the Guardian calling it “impressively intimate” and the Telegraph claiming that this demonstrates Sally’s greatness as a political writer.
Published by Faber, Intermezzo follows two brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek, who are grieving the loss of their father and, at first glance, seem to have little in common.
Peter is an established lawyer living in Dublin, successful in his field and confident.
“But after his father’s death, he’s on medication to help him sleep and is struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women,” the summary reads.
One of those women is his first love, Sylvia, a person with whom he shares an emotional bond, but they lack a physical relationship after an accident left her unable to have penetrative sex.
That leads Peter to the second woman in his life: Naomi, a hedonistic 23-year-old college student, a connection that satisfies Peter’s physical needs.
His brother, on the other hand, leads a very different lifestyle and is a 22-year-old competitive chess player who admits to having difficulty with social interaction.
The summary explains: ‘Now, in the early weeks of his grief, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own troubled past, and their lives become quickly and intensely intertwined.’
‘For two grieving brothers and their loved ones, this is a new interlude, a period of desire, desperation and possibility, a chance to discover how much a life could hold inside without breaking.’
Sally comes from humble beginnings and her own life experiences greatly influenced her work.
Born in Castlebar, a town of about 10,000 inhabitants in County Mayo, a rural area in the west of Ireland, her mother was a teacher and her father a technician who raised her with strong socialist values.
And this comes through clearly in her work. All three novels are set partly in rural western Ireland (or have characters from there), while she describes herself as a “lonely girl” like Marianne in Ordinary People and went to Trinity College Dublin, like the protagonists of her first two novels.
Since Conversations Between Friends was published in 2017, Sally’s three novels have sold more than 1.3 million copies in the UK alone. Pictured, a still from the TV adaptation
This comes as Sally’s new book Intermezzo yesterday had fans queuing around the block as they waited to get their hands on her latest novel following its release.
Since Conversations Between Friends came out in 2017, Sally’s three novels have sold more than 1.3 million copies in the UK alone – and that’s not counting sales during the pandemic that saw her return to the top of the bestseller list thanks to the success of the TV adaptation of Normal People.
Normal People was the most-streamed BBC show of 2020, with a staggering 62.7 million views. It had a further 3 million views on Ireland’s RTÉ Player, and even more on Hulu.
Her novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, sold over 45,000 copies in the UK in its first week of release, becoming the best-selling hardback fiction title of 2021.
The writer began writing her first novel, Conversations Among Friends, in 2014, after beginning a master’s degree in American literature. When a literary agent in London discovered her essay about her experiences in debates and asked her to show him more, the student sent him the manuscript.
Within months, it was the subject of a bidding war with seven publishers. The rights were eventually sold for a rumored five-figure sum, and it was published in 12 languages at once in 2017.
