The Small Rebellions of Sally Rooney’s <em>Normal People</em>
Sally Rooney’s new novel, Normal People, was recently featured in a Vanity Fair spread of “this season’s best new books and the must-have bags to stash them in.” In the picture, it leans confidingly against a Mansur Gavriel tote bag in a pleasing highlighter yellow (price: $595).
The person who owns that combination of things would be rich, tasteful, and smart, the kind of person who has a well-paying job (creative director? brand consultant?) that still leaves her time to read novels and carry a whimsically yellow purse to lunch with friends, who would have all also read and liked Normal People.
Rooney is a self-described Marxist, and I suspect that she would enjoy ’s neat illustration of a point she makes inabout the way books can function as cultural currency. “It was culture
