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A review by solitaireintherenaissance
Unread Messages by Sally Rooney
2.0
⭐️⭐️.5 stars
‘On the street outside they were smiling again, and their smiles were mysterious. It was a cool, bright Sunday morning, the white façades of buildings reflected the sunlight, traffic was passing, people were out walking dogs, calling to one another across the street. Simon kissed Eileen’s cheek, and they wished each other goodbye. ♦’
i liked this less than her other short story (the only other thing i’ve read by Rooney) ‘Mr. Salary.’
this still kept with her simplistic (yet) descriptive writing style (at its core).
but, it was written with too much passive voice and manages to tell you everything without ever going into the depth of showing you; it’s not walking the walk it’s just talking the talk. + i think she was trying a little to hard to be clever by not fully introducing the narrator until part way through but it just didn’t work for me, it felt like i was reading it in the wrong order. it’s pretty hard to execute this kind of thing, and this was an example of it not (quite) working. it also managed to be randomly very political.
at least this’ll be forgettable.
in summary, this felt like a poor ‘Mr. Salary’ parody & managed to feel quite overwritten, aimless, & pointless.
still, this is tempting me (somewhat) to pick up my unread copy of Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’
‘On the street outside they were smiling again, and their smiles were mysterious. It was a cool, bright Sunday morning, the white façades of buildings reflected the sunlight, traffic was passing, people were out walking dogs, calling to one another across the street. Simon kissed Eileen’s cheek, and they wished each other goodbye. ♦’
i liked this less than her other short story (the only other thing i’ve read by Rooney) ‘Mr. Salary.’
this still kept with her simplistic (yet) descriptive writing style (at its core).
but, it was written with too much passive voice and manages to tell you everything without ever going into the depth of showing you; it’s not walking the walk it’s just talking the talk. + i think she was trying a little to hard to be clever by not fully introducing the narrator until part way through but it just didn’t work for me, it felt like i was reading it in the wrong order. it’s pretty hard to execute this kind of thing, and this was an example of it not (quite) working. it also managed to be randomly very political.
at least this’ll be forgettable.
in summary, this felt like a poor ‘Mr. Salary’ parody & managed to feel quite overwritten, aimless, & pointless.
still, this is tempting me (somewhat) to pick up my unread copy of Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’