As someone whose birthday just barely qualifies as a Baby Boomer, I was interested in Sally Rooney’s exploration of love relationships and life choices made by Millennials in her new book. The novel is structured as an email exchange between Alice and Eileen over the course of two years, layered between their daily lives and encounters with boyfriends Felix and Simon, respectively. Alice and Eileen were college roommates, and close friends; Alice is a successful novelist and Eileen is an assistant editor at a literary magazine. Alice meets Felix through a dating app, and continues a relationship through the course of the book. Simon is a lfelong friend of Eileen, and she reignites a romantic relationship at the book’s start. Felix works at a warehouse (akin to Amazon picking), and Simon is a political advisor to a left-leaning politician in Dublin. We learn of Alice’s psychiatric breakdown prior to the book’s start, and she moves to a remote seaside town for a respite, where she meets Felix.

Much of the email and conversational banter relates to each person trying to find their way through careers and relationships, intellectually posturing and exploring how to find a place in a world that seems superficial yet moving toward self-destruction. The story largely takes place a couple of years before the pandemic, during the Trump administration, and ends during the pandemic shutdown, eighteen months later. Eileen, Alice and Simon struggle with finding meaning in their careers, while also wrestling with either not making enough money to get by, or making so much money while making ethical concessions. Simon meets with poor constituents, or refugees, and writes position papers that seem to have no impact, and is paid very well for this; Alice has written two novels that have done extremely well, yet feels that she could be forgotten tomorrow, making no impact on the world. Felix and Eileen financially struggle, and also feel sad over the lack of meaning in their work and lives.

None of the characters seem to be able to reconcile sexuality, love, and relationships into a meaningful structure. They each seem to bemoan the pointlessness of traditional marriage and family in a world that seems to be approaching apocalypse. At the same time, each yearns for love and commitment, to be both needed, cared for, and sexually fulfilled, in one package. They each seem reluctant to give of themselves, communicate their needs, or appear vulnerable to their partners, necessary components of strong intimate relationships. They substitute witty jabs, snark, and over-intellectual conversation instead of sincere sharing, as though that would be so old fashioned. Simon, the only character who has found a grounding in his practice of faith, has perhaps a more stable life, yet still is unable to honestly express his needs and desires.

Rooney has been compared to Hemingway and Raymond Carver for her spare, realistic dialogue and description. She also does interesting work with point of view, describing a room before the characters enter, plays the scene, then describes it after they exit. Or, cross-cutting between two characters, each at their places or work, describing in each sentence their specific tasks. It has a great effect, portraying the conditions so many find in their work life, almost mechanical and lifeless. If you are able to enter into these characters’ struggles, you will find this an interestingly told story. Their difficulties are not unique, however; they are the issues of people in their twenties and thirties, trying to find a meaningful path through life, and whether or who to share that life, a chosen family of friends, our given families, or creating new families. We all try to find meaning within the choices and mistakes we make, and the circumstances we find ourselves in. Recommended.