Where to start with Sally Rooney

Irish novelist, born 1991. Won the Costa Novel Award in 2018 and the British Book Awards: Fiction Book of the Year in 2019.

Best Sally Rooney book to start with: Normal People (2018), on 4 of the 15 lists it could have made.

Normal People is the place to start. It won the Costa Novel Award in 2018 and Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2019. Two teenagers from the same small town in the west of Ireland drift together and apart through school and university in Dublin, and you can finish it in a couple of days. The dialogue is not set in quotation marks, which takes a few pages to get used to.

Beautiful World, Where are You is told partly through emails between two friends, and it was shortlisted for Fiction Book of the Year in 2022. Intermezzo, shortlisted in 2025, is about two brothers after their father’s death. Both are longer, more reflective and less driven by plot than Normal People, so read them once you have enjoyed her first success.

Sally Rooney's books, ranked best first

Normal People comes first, on 4 of the 15 lists it could have made, followed by Intermezzo and Beautiful World, Where are You.

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