The millennial generation has come of age. University is now the workplace, there are more family obligations, the deaths of loved ones are no longer unusual, friendship is not the main emotional relationship. These changes do not mean that the conflicts of youth have disappeared, or at least not completely. Sentimental issues are just as complicated, if not more so, although perhaps for different reasons than before. Or for the same reasons, but from a different perspective. This is how Sally Rooney (Castlebar, Ireland, 1991) narrates it in Interludeher highly anticipated latest novel, which will be released worldwide on September 26th. Random House is publishing it in Spanish with a translation by Inga Pellisa, and Periscopi in Catalan, translated by Ferran Ràfols Gesa.
This is the fourth book by the author who earned the ‘voice of her generation’ diploma since she published her first novel. Conversations between friends (Random House) in 2017 at the age of 26. A diploma that she had not strived for – if she even aspired to be a voice of that generation, as Lena Dunham’s character said in Girls– but it helps critics and publishers to present it without having to give too many explanations.
Interlude is the story of two brothers who are grieving the death of their father. They live in Dublin and Peter, the eldest, is a successful lawyer with very clear moral principles in his speech that sometimes conflict with his behaviour. He is 10 years older than his brother Ivan, a chess player who was a prodigy as a child but who at 22 is more of an expert in his downturn. The relationship between the two stopped being good a long time ago, although it was in the past. Now they despise each other, each for their own reasons.
The focus on the male relationship
In his universe there is Sylvia, an old girlfriend of Peter, who is almost a member of the family and keeps in touch with Ivan despite the fact that she is no longer his brother’s partner. They separated after she suffered a serious accident that condemned her to suffer chronic pain and now they maintain a close platonic relationship despite the fact that the old feelings still survive. In addition, he is having an affair with a university student called Naomi, to whom he also lends money when she needs it, a detail that disturbs him although he does not want to give it too much importance. Ivan has at his side Margaret, a thirty-something woman almost divorced from an alcoholic, whom he meets at a chess exhibition in a nearby town and her dog Alexei who he must take care of although he does not know how.
Although some of her characters have aged, like her, the recurring themes of her novels are still present: social class differences, the elasticity of the limits of what is allowed in romantic relationships, sexual attraction that cannot be contained, religious beliefs (somewhat shoehorned in), absent parental figures, feminism. She has kept some of her usual settings such as the university – where Peter and Sylvia met and where they currently work – and self-referential details, such as the debating championships they participated in in their youth. She herself was a champion in that field and the essay she published in The Dublin Review in 2015, Even If You Beat Me, –with which he caught the attention of his agent– deals with the subject.
The most notable change that has been introduced in Interlude (a term used to define an unexpected move in chess) is that the protagonists are no longer two friends, but two brothers. They are the ones who take the lead, although the writer also lets Sylvia and Margaret speak. Only Naomi’s thoughts are hinted at because she barely shows what she thinks, although it serves to outline the love triangle and, incidentally, to criticize the housing problem in Dublin (which can be extended to the rest of Europe).
400 pages of precise sentences and dialogues without dashes or quotation marks, to which he has added a few more to refer to quotes from other texts by authors such as Shakespeare, Russell, Keats, Henry James, TS Elliot, Bobby Fischer or Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others. 400 pages of a story that ends somewhat abruptly, like his penultimate book. Where are you, beautiful world? (Random House, 2021).
All the machinery
If the marketing campaign that her Anglo-Saxon publishers carried out with her previous novel was overwhelming – pop-up shops, writing and candle-making workshops, promotional kits that included a yellow hat, a cloth bag, pencils and a sharpener, among other actions – that of Interlude has gone up a level. The massive sending of galley proofs to booksellers, journalists and influencers (booktokers, booktubers and even celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker) have managed to get the novel to have more than 500 reviews, almost all positive, on Goodreads before it was published.
And, what’s more, they have also managed to make these advance copies a very attractive display of status, as Madeline Diamond has analyzed in detail in The Esquire (Interestingly, she has specified that she did not have them because she did not ask for them, a note that seems more like a justification.) A move that she had already carried out with the previous release –some copies were sold online for hundreds of dollars – but on a smaller scale.
In addition, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, its American publisher, held an event four days ago with Belletrist, Karah Preiss’s book club and actress Emma Roberts (both present) at the Irish Arts Center in New York on the occasion of the publication. At the party, more in the fashion sector than in the publishing sector, there was a bead stand to make ‘friendship bracelets’ and chess-themed cookies, a photo booth, yellow and white merchandising like the cover of the book in English and a performance by DJ Books, a famous booktuber named Adam Beaser. And of course, attendees also took home a copy of the book.
The fact that the writer does not participate in any of these events –she would surely prefer to lock herself in a castle and throw away the key rather than do so– is not an obstacle to her being classified as the ‘Taylor Swift of literature’ (publishers are very clear about who they are addressing) and generating debates for or against her person more than for her writing. But, as the journalist Begoña Gómez said in an article related to this ‘for or against’ that Rooney raises: “She is not responsible for the expectations generated by everything she does, she is not guilty of her fandom, some factions of which can be a little disgusting, and she is only partially responsible for the campaigns around her releases.”
Rooney’s superpower
In Spanish-speaking markets, the marketing campaign has not been and will not be as overwhelming as the English-speaking one. Random House editor Roberta Gerhard explained to elDiario.es that “Sally Rooney is a global phenomenon. Her books have been translated into 40 languages, although she is an author who is mostly read in English.” This explains why the scale of the launch in Ireland, the United Kingdom or the United States is difficult to “replicate in other countries,” she says. Despite everything, Gerhard says that the plan for Latin America is also very ambitious.
Are these efforts translating into sales? The editor is diplomatic, but not very specific. She describes the sales forecasts as “very good”, with an estimated reader base of 150,000, and the work as an “exquisite advance in her writing”. “Sally Rooney reads our lives like no one else and words are her superpower,” she says.
The book does not go on sale for two days, but today the press embargo is lifted. influencers In the sector, who were not allowed to talk about it. On social networks, some photos of the galley cover (that status) had been seen, but no opinions or reviews like this one. In English-speaking countries, it was possible and on TikTok and Instagram it is easy to find users who talk about the book or show some promotional product such as the cloth bag. In newspapers, interviews with the author have also been published (it is assumed that she will not grant them to the Spanish media) and reviews such as the very enthusiastic one by The Guardianin which the author asks whether there is a better novelist than Rooney out there right now. There are bound to be many opinions on this.
Source: www.eldiario.es
