Sally Rooney: All Her Books and What to Read Next
June 28, 2026
Sally Rooney published her debut novel at 26, became one of the most discussed literary writers of her generation before she was 30, and has maintained a specific and recognisable world across four books — Dublin, young professionals, relationships where everything is both overanalysed and never quite spoken, and a style that is spare almost to the point of absence (no quotation marks, minimal interior monologue).
Whether you love her or find her exasperating, she is one of the defining novelists of the 2020s. Here is a guide to all her books.
The novels in order
Conversations with Friends (2017)
Frances, a twenty-one-year-old Dublin student, and her best friend Bobbi enter the orbit of Melissa, a journalist, and her husband Nick. What follows is an affair between Frances and Nick, and an examination of how people narrate their own lives to themselves and others.
Conversations with Friends is the least famous of Rooney’s novels but arguably the most interesting structurally — the relationship between Frances and Bobbi, ex-partners who remain creatively and emotionally enmeshed, is the book’s quiet centre. Nick is a passive character; the women drive everything. A Hulu series adaptation starred Alison Oliver and Joe Alwyn.
Read this if: You want to start from the beginning, or you prefer Rooney’s more contained early style.
Normal People (2018)
Connell and Marianne meet at school in Sligo and carry their relationship — on, off, and complicated — through university in Dublin. The novel follows them across several years and multiple shifts in their dynamic: who has social power, who is more vulnerable, how much of their behaviour toward each other is shaped by class and circumstance.
Normal People is Rooney’s most commercially successful book and probably her most emotionally direct. The Hulu/BBC adaptation starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones is one of the most faithful literary adaptations in recent memory.
Read this if: You want to start with her best-known work, or you’ve seen the series and want more.
Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021)
Alice is a novelist who has become famous and is having some kind of breakdown in a rented house in rural Ireland. Her friend Eileen is in Dublin in a relationship that isn’t working. The novel is structured partly around long emails between the two women discussing literature, politics, friendship, and what it means to care about anything in a burning world.
This is Rooney’s most explicitly essayistic novel — the emails are real arguments about ideas, not just stylistic devices. Some readers find it her best; others find the meta-commentary on literary culture irritating. Either way, it is distinctly different from her first two novels.
Read this if: You’ve already read Normal People and want more range, or you’re interested in literary fiction that grapples explicitly with the present.
Intermezzo (2024)
Rooney’s fourth novel focuses on two brothers — Peter, a Dublin lawyer, and Ivan, a chess prodigy — dealing with their father’s death and their different romantic entanglements. The most structurally ambitious of her books and the one that most departs from her previous world: older protagonists, less explicitly political setting.
Intermezzo divided critics — some found it her most mature work; others missed the tight Dublin-young-professional world of the earlier novels. Worth reading on its own terms.
What order to read them
Start with Normal People if you want to understand what all the fuss is about. It’s the most accessible, the best-paced, and the most emotionally direct of the four.
Start with Conversations with Friends if you want to read in publication order, or you’re interested in seeing how her voice developed.
The order doesn’t matter much — none of the books are sequels or prequels, and no characters cross over between them. Rooney’s world is consistent in tone and atmosphere but each book stands alone.
What to read when you’ve finished
Rooney belongs to a tradition of Irish literary fiction — writers interested in interiority, class, language, and the gap between what people feel and what they say.
Colm Tóibín (Nora Webster, The Blackwater Lightship) — quiet, devastating, precise about grief and repression.
Anne Enright (The Gathering) — Irish Booker winner, darker than Rooney, equally interested in family and silence.
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation) — shares Rooney’s interest in narcissism and self-destruction, but American and considerably darker in tone.
Elif Batuman (The Idiot, Either/Or) — an American equivalent: a young woman at university, extreme interiority, ideas and romance intertwined. Many Rooney readers find Batuman the closest match.
