"Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. Though one time when she's forced into a social situation with some of their classmates, she briefly fantasizes about what would happen if she revealed their connection: "How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive." When they both move to Dublin for Trinity College, their positions are swapped: Marianne now seems electric and in-demand while Connell feels adrift in this unfamiliar environment. Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house. Connell is popular in school, good at soccer, and nice Marianne is strange and friendless. It's 2011, after the financial crisis, which hovers around the edges of the book like a ghost. Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan are classmates in the small Irish town of Carricklea, where his mother works for her family as a cleaner. ![]() In outline it's a simple story, but Rooney tells it with bravura intelligence, wit, and delicacy. Her second has already won the Costa Novel Award, among other honors, since it was published in Ireland and Britain last year. Irish writer Rooney has made a trans-Atlantic splash since publishing her first novel, Conversations With Friends, in 2017. Finely drawn and paced and written with intense compassion, the novel shifts ground with a late development that will test and push forward each of the four, leading to a conclusion consistent with Wall’s grace and control.Ī moving, eloquent exploration of faith and its response to the refining fire of life’s challenges.Ī young Irish couple gets together, splits up, gets together, splits up-sorry, can't tell you how it ends! Wall has a very precise sensibility, and there is no escaping the sense of tidy predetermination in the clear, fixed positions of her four figures and their various oppositions, seen through the debates, struggles, rejections, and consolations that arise among them. Old-fashioned in tone and subject matter, the story is set in the mid-20th century and evokes some of the stifling social norms of the era. The four eventually connect when Charles and James are offered the joint ministry of Third Presbyterian Church in Greenwich Village. When both men opt for a life in the church, Nan is better equipped for the role of clergyman’s wife than independent, brittle Lily, who feels no obligation to conform. ![]() Charles’ unswerving love for Lily is matched by James’ determination to marry Nan even though neither couple seems a natural fit. Nan, the daughter of a Southern minister, has learned patience and generosity while Lily, orphaned at 15, is happiest when withdrawn. ![]() James, whose drunken father was broken by war, will grow up to be full of impatience and the urge to action. Charles, the son of a Harvard professor, is a man reliant on research and insight. ![]() Writing with restrained lyricism, Wall’s debut-15 years in the making-offers a kind of literary chamber music, combining the viewpoints of a quartet of characters across multiple decades and events. Molded by their backgrounds and childhood experiences, the individual members of two couples adopt beliefs which will define them-until they are confronted by a heart-wrenching challenge.
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