Castlebar is proud of its exciting young author Sally
CASTLEBAR author Sally's Rooney's debut novel – Conversations With Friends – was launched at a well-attended reception in the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar last night.
A daughter of Marie Farrell and Kieran Rooney, Newport Road, the talented 26-year-old writer thanked everybody for their support.
She told of the new challenges facing her since making the big break in the publishing world and announced that her second novel is on the way shortly.
In a recent profile of her in The Guardian, journalist Paula Cocozza wrote: “To listen to Sally Rooney, you would guess she has always been a great talker. As an undergraduate at Trinity College Dublin, she became Europe’s No 1 student debater.
“Now she has written her debut novel – Conversations With Friends – which motors along thanks to its brilliant, funny and startling dialogue, most of which is played out between two college students (ex-girlfriends, now best friends) and an older married couple.
“Rooney is 26 and her youth, and the youth of her sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued narrator, have led her editor at Faber to describe her as “Salinger for the Snapchat generation.
“The book sold in a seven-way auction last year and Rooney, perhaps with the same energy she has in conversation, worked with “huge speed”, writing 100,000 words of Conversations With Friends in three months, while also meeting the deadlines for her master’s in American literature.
“She had been approached by Tracy Bohan of the Wylie literacy agency, who represents Eimear McBride (another Castlebar native) and Ali Smith, but held off sending her the manuscript.
“I suspect she has always been a high achiever, because at Trinity she won a “very lucrative” scholarship, which gave her space to write. Then, when she decided she wanted to enter into the “glamorous” world of debating, she became No. 1 in Europe.”
High praise indeed.
Her book is on sale at all local outlets and well done to local playwright, Ken Armstrong, for launcing her book with such style and wit.