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“... In​ 1983, a referendum was held in Ireland to establish a constitutional right to life for embryos and foetuses. Abortion was not legal in Ireland at the time; it never has been. The referendum was the result of a campaign by conservative religious groups aimed at preventing any future legislation permitting abortion in any but the most extreme, life-threatening circumstances ...”

“... On​ a recent episode of an Irish talk show, a guest celebrated her 90th birthday accompanied by her 19 children. The children, now mostly in their fifties and sixties, occupied the whole front row of the audience. Other (male) guests on the show came forward to shake her hand; the Irish Mirror described her as ‘inspirational’. She seemed like a nice woman and a loving mother, but strangers don’t spring from their seats to congratulate loving mothers of one or two children ...”

“... to involve mysterious and transformative forces. I remembered Badiou’s formulation when I heard Sally Rooney describe the genesis of her books. Her characters don’t arrive singly, she told Molly Fischer in an interview in 2019, but in twos and threes, and the dynamic between them is what makes her think she might have an idea worth pursuing. In all ...”

“... The blandness​ of Sally Rooney’s novels, last year’s Conversations with Friends and her new one, Normal People, begins and ends with those oddly non-committal titles. Inside the books her territory is classic – the love relationships of young people – but mapped with an unusual scrupulous smoothness ...”

“... Sally​ Rooney’s emergence in recent years as the avatar of literary success and its online scapegoat is not unrelated to the content of her novels. Normal People begins with its protagonists, Marianne and Connell, comparing their grades at secondary school and ends with Connell getting onto a graduate creative writing programme ...”

“... nightclub hook-up or kebab shop battering. It’s a far cry from the milieu that interests Sally Rooney, who grew up in Castlebar, just twenty miles down the road from Ballina, where Barrett went to school (he lived in a village halfway between the two towns). When a character in one of the stories says his daughter is ‘off to Trinity’, it’s ...”

“... luxury brands as Chanel, whose showy logo is considered too ‘mature’. And they’re reading Sally Rooney. Chinese millennials are a product of globalisation. Like their Western counterparts, they don’t much like traditional marriage arrangements. We have smartphones to keep us in touch with our friends, single millennials might say, unlimited ...”

“... that holds true across genres, whether it’s Harry Potter, Fifty Shades of Grey, Jack Reacher or Sally Rooney). There are layers on layers of familiarity, in other words, in both text and paratext, for readers to sink into that keep them coming back for more.Each of the later books in the series has another layer of familiarity, of course, since we ...”

“... of what they want and how to conduct relationships; they wouldn’t be entirely out of place in a Sally Rooney novel. The women are stronger: more grounded, less vulnerable. Krishan’s relationship with Anjum fails, in part, because her work as an activist matters to her more than he does. Where he’s aimless and lovelorn, she has conviction and ...”

“... of them that leads to much of the confusion she says she feels. (Several authors, including Sally Rooney, Garth Greenwell and Kristen Roupenian, have used BDSM to dramatise such shifting power relations in recent fiction.) In many understandings of BDSM, if all goes well, the sub has some power. After dictating their safe words and limits, they ...”

“... few capable of raising a smile, he describes the moment he tried to seal the purchase of Wayne Rooney from Everton in 2004. He was in his office, and the Everton chairman, Bill Kenwright, was weeping copiously. Through his tears Kenwright makes a phone call and hands the receiver to Ferguson. On the other end an elderly female voice berates him: ‘Don’t ...”