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Mr Salary
My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all.
Years ago, Sukie moved in with Nathan because her mother was dead and her father was difficult, and she had nowhere else to go. Now they are on the brink of the inevitable.
Sally Rooney is one of the most acclaimed young talents of recent years. With her minute attention to the power dynamics in everyday speech, she builds up sexual tension and throws a deceptively low-key glance at love and death.
Years ago, Sukie moved in with Nathan because her mother was dead and her father was difficult, and she had nowhere else to go. Now they are on the brink of the inevitable.
Sally Rooney is one of the most acclaimed young talents of recent years. With her minute attention to the power dynamics in everyday speech, she builds up sexual tension and throws a deceptively low-key glance at love and death.
33 pages, Paperback
First published April 26, 2016
306 people are currently reading
55806 people want to read
About the author
Sally Rooney
36 books68k followersSally Rooney was born in 1991 and lives in Dublin, where she graduated from Trinity College. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Dublin Review, The White Review, The Stinging Fly, and the Winter Pages anthology.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 6,706 reviews
March 21, 2024
Sally Rooney i love you
that's it. that's the review.
okay, and also, i’m in a terrible reading slump - like, a can’t-talk-about-it-for-fear-of-fairytale-style-curses worst-it’s-ever-been capital-B-Bad slump - and my brain is currently a hostile environment and so in times like this i turn to little beloved books.
of all the books i’ve ever read, approx 6% (that’s an actual figure) are 5 stars. there are even fewer i’m confident would hold up to a reread.
this 33 page lil thing is one of them!
----------------
additional reread updates
i am so tempted to five star this right now it's crazy. check back in with me in the morning
update: yeah it's a 5.
----------------
rereading updates
buddy reread with my Sally Rooney fan club co-president because we both forgot how to read
(and oops we did it again)
----------------
currently-reading updates
i will officially read absolutely anything Sally Rooney writes. luckily she wrote short stories so i don't have to try to scrounge up her grocery lists yet
that's it. that's the review.
okay, and also, i’m in a terrible reading slump - like, a can’t-talk-about-it-for-fear-of-fairytale-style-curses worst-it’s-ever-been capital-B-Bad slump - and my brain is currently a hostile environment and so in times like this i turn to little beloved books.
of all the books i’ve ever read, approx 6% (that’s an actual figure) are 5 stars. there are even fewer i’m confident would hold up to a reread.
this 33 page lil thing is one of them!
----------------
additional reread updates
i am so tempted to five star this right now it's crazy. check back in with me in the morning
update: yeah it's a 5.
----------------
rereading updates
buddy reread with my Sally Rooney fan club co-president because we both forgot how to read
(and oops we did it again)
----------------
currently-reading updates
i will officially read absolutely anything Sally Rooney writes. luckily she wrote short stories so i don't have to try to scrounge up her grocery lists yet
December 17, 2018
SALLY MAKE THIS A FULL NOVEL BRUH
January 28, 2021
Now I'm completely out of Rooney. Maybe if I offered to help her out, do her chores and stuff, to free up more time, the next one might be ready next year? And instead of payment I could get a sneak peek of chapters as they're written? Is this coming over a bit Annie Wilkes?
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1735525095i%2F6431467._UX200_CR0%2C11%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
July 14, 2025
‘When will we know if this was a bad idea or not?’
Sally Rooney writes with such precision, her rather unadorned prose moving like a scalpel dissecting human relationships and removing layers of the heart. Mr. Salary kicked off Rooney’s career, winning the short story award from the Irish Times (you can read the entire story here) and attracting publishers into a massive bidding war for rights to publish her debut novel. While it is a brief read, Rooney manages to extract an incredible amount of insight through this slice-of-life look at the complex relationship between early-20s Sukie and her friend and father-figure, the nearly-40s Nathan. Mr. Salary is sharp and concise while delivering an intricate portraiture of emotional complexity, power-dynamics and desire that feels like a prototype of Rooney’s characters and themes to come.
‘My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all.’
In her debut novel, Conversations with Friends, Irish writer Sally Rooney asks ‘is it possible we could develop an alternative model of loving each other?’ Her works are full of non-traditional relationships—often toxic or approaching taboo if not socially-frowned upon—yet Rooney never sets out to moralize on them but merely present them in their messy and emotionally wrenching complexity. Rooney likes to discuss ‘the idea that relationships constantly take forms that don’t really fit into categories that we use to describe those relationships,’ as she says in an interview with Granta, and her deeply-interior novels are mostly played out through conversation and miscommunication as ‘I’m interested in what we are communicating when we’re not necessarily communicating.’ This is forefront in Mr. Salary, with an emotional connection boiling right at the surface of the novel ready to burst at any moment, though as is typical in Rooney there are social dynamics that make it a fraught path of feelings to follow.
Sukie has feelings for Nathan, the much older man and distant relative-by-marriage with whom she moved in with out of necessity at the age of 19 when he was 34. He serves as a father figure, caring for her, buying her things, showing her the media his generation enjoyed (they watch Twin Peaks), and this is only enhanced due to Sukie’s own widower father being rather absentee and problematic. Though her feelings grow over the years and by 24 she openly jokes about fantasizing over him. Age gaps are common in Rooney novels, such as Francis and Nick in Conversations, thoughmore akin to Simon and the age-gap with Eileen in Beautiful World, Where Are You?. Though unlike Simon who is openly aroused by age gaps (there is a sex scene where Eileen jokes about being his daughter, turning him on), Nathan is actively trying to not upset the balance of his role as a father figure by allowing his attraction to Sukie to take over…well at least in the past for the most part.
This story feels like a prototype for Rooney’s leading women as well. Sukie’s family history is tragic and her poor relationship with her father is implied to be part of why she is drawn to father figures, which is all very much like Frances and even Marianne in Normal People has implications that her mental health struggles and sexual submissiveness are exacerbated by her poor relationship with her parents. In Mr. Salary, Rooney is able to succinctly pack multiple years of history between Sukie and Nathan into a singular day, with their non-relationship finally coming to a head when she returns to Dublin to see her dad who is dying of leukemia. ‘We were predictable to each other,’ she says of Nathan, ‘like two halves of the same brain,’ and this familiarity is comforting in a life where uncertainty and shame ruled the day. However, Nathan, who seems to have little interest in women his own age beyond one-night flings, also uses a sort of jokey-mean tone with Sukie. You know, the kind of gross “he’s making fun of you and being mean because he likes you” behavior that gets normalized in youth. Nathan comes across as potentially emotionally stunted, though it seems more an indication that abuse or shame is normalized in Sukie and she finds it arousing. Which is very present in all of Rooney’s books.
The more her dad wanes in her life, the more she clings to Nathan as a father figure as if to subconsciously balance everything out, but it also leads to deeper sexual urges for him. ‘They hated each other,’ she says of Nathan and her father, who negatively nicknamed him Mr Salary, ‘and I mediated their mutual hatred in a way that made me feel successfully feminine.’ Her desires to feel wanted and cared for in both a fatherly way and a romantic way have merged, and the dislike between the two registers like a love triangle affirming her desirability. ‘Emotionally, I saw myself as a smooth, hard little ball,’ Sukie says (she is called frigid by a former boyfriend), and enjoys feeling that Nathan ‘couldn’t get purchase on me. I just rolled away.’ Sukie seems to want to believe she is being chased and holds the power in this relationship, similar to Frances feeling the power-balance was more equal that the reality of it in Conversations.
The issues around the impending death of her father brings up issues of mortality. Rooney crafts a great metaphor on the will he/ won’t he aspect of her father’s death with Sukie watching what might be a body but isn’t being dredged from a river, causing Sukie to muse on the spectacle of death. She considers why humans often act ‘as if death was more of a miracle than life was,’ and there is a great blend in the end of the story with death and sex juxtaposed as if to imply ideas of destruction versus creation.
Easily read in a single sitting, Mr Salary is a great insight into the themes and characters that Rooney would certainly expand upon over her coming novels. It is a bit slight, yet still feels packed with insight and builds the rather tangled web of feelings and complicated situationship that is heart to her works. I love the way her prose is always so direct and mostly devoid of sentimentality, yet she peppers it with such striking metaphors that it nonetheless stirs the heart and mind. A great opener to a career to come.
3.5/5
Sally Rooney writes with such precision, her rather unadorned prose moving like a scalpel dissecting human relationships and removing layers of the heart. Mr. Salary kicked off Rooney’s career, winning the short story award from the Irish Times (you can read the entire story here) and attracting publishers into a massive bidding war for rights to publish her debut novel. While it is a brief read, Rooney manages to extract an incredible amount of insight through this slice-of-life look at the complex relationship between early-20s Sukie and her friend and father-figure, the nearly-40s Nathan. Mr. Salary is sharp and concise while delivering an intricate portraiture of emotional complexity, power-dynamics and desire that feels like a prototype of Rooney’s characters and themes to come.
‘My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all.’
In her debut novel, Conversations with Friends, Irish writer Sally Rooney asks ‘is it possible we could develop an alternative model of loving each other?’ Her works are full of non-traditional relationships—often toxic or approaching taboo if not socially-frowned upon—yet Rooney never sets out to moralize on them but merely present them in their messy and emotionally wrenching complexity. Rooney likes to discuss ‘the idea that relationships constantly take forms that don’t really fit into categories that we use to describe those relationships,’ as she says in an interview with Granta, and her deeply-interior novels are mostly played out through conversation and miscommunication as ‘I’m interested in what we are communicating when we’re not necessarily communicating.’ This is forefront in Mr. Salary, with an emotional connection boiling right at the surface of the novel ready to burst at any moment, though as is typical in Rooney there are social dynamics that make it a fraught path of feelings to follow.
’I had read that infant animals formed attachments to inappropriate things sometimes, like falcons falling in love with their human breeders, or pandas with zookeepers, things like that.’
Sukie has feelings for Nathan, the much older man and distant relative-by-marriage with whom she moved in with out of necessity at the age of 19 when he was 34. He serves as a father figure, caring for her, buying her things, showing her the media his generation enjoyed (they watch Twin Peaks), and this is only enhanced due to Sukie’s own widower father being rather absentee and problematic. Though her feelings grow over the years and by 24 she openly jokes about fantasizing over him. Age gaps are common in Rooney novels, such as Francis and Nick in Conversations, thoughmore akin to Simon and the age-gap with Eileen in Beautiful World, Where Are You?. Though unlike Simon who is openly aroused by age gaps (there is a sex scene where Eileen jokes about being his daughter, turning him on), Nathan is actively trying to not upset the balance of his role as a father figure by allowing his attraction to Sukie to take over…well at least in the past for the most part.
This story feels like a prototype for Rooney’s leading women as well. Sukie’s family history is tragic and her poor relationship with her father is implied to be part of why she is drawn to father figures, which is all very much like Frances and even Marianne in Normal People has implications that her mental health struggles and sexual submissiveness are exacerbated by her poor relationship with her parents. In Mr. Salary, Rooney is able to succinctly pack multiple years of history between Sukie and Nathan into a singular day, with their non-relationship finally coming to a head when she returns to Dublin to see her dad who is dying of leukemia. ‘We were predictable to each other,’ she says of Nathan, ‘like two halves of the same brain,’ and this familiarity is comforting in a life where uncertainty and shame ruled the day. However, Nathan, who seems to have little interest in women his own age beyond one-night flings, also uses a sort of jokey-mean tone with Sukie. You know, the kind of gross “he’s making fun of you and being mean because he likes you” behavior that gets normalized in youth. Nathan comes across as potentially emotionally stunted, though it seems more an indication that abuse or shame is normalized in Sukie and she finds it arousing. Which is very present in all of Rooney’s books.
The more her dad wanes in her life, the more she clings to Nathan as a father figure as if to subconsciously balance everything out, but it also leads to deeper sexual urges for him. ‘They hated each other,’ she says of Nathan and her father, who negatively nicknamed him Mr Salary, ‘and I mediated their mutual hatred in a way that made me feel successfully feminine.’ Her desires to feel wanted and cared for in both a fatherly way and a romantic way have merged, and the dislike between the two registers like a love triangle affirming her desirability. ‘Emotionally, I saw myself as a smooth, hard little ball,’ Sukie says (she is called frigid by a former boyfriend), and enjoys feeling that Nathan ‘couldn’t get purchase on me. I just rolled away.’ Sukie seems to want to believe she is being chased and holds the power in this relationship, similar to Frances feeling the power-balance was more equal that the reality of it in Conversations.
The issues around the impending death of her father brings up issues of mortality. Rooney crafts a great metaphor on the will he/ won’t he aspect of her father’s death with Sukie watching what might be a body but isn’t being dredged from a river, causing Sukie to muse on the spectacle of death. She considers why humans often act ‘as if death was more of a miracle than life was,’ and there is a great blend in the end of the story with death and sex juxtaposed as if to imply ideas of destruction versus creation.
Easily read in a single sitting, Mr Salary is a great insight into the themes and characters that Rooney would certainly expand upon over her coming novels. It is a bit slight, yet still feels packed with insight and builds the rather tangled web of feelings and complicated situationship that is heart to her works. I love the way her prose is always so direct and mostly devoid of sentimentality, yet she peppers it with such striking metaphors that it nonetheless stirs the heart and mind. A great opener to a career to come.
3.5/5
October 15, 2024
We were predictable to each other, like two halves of the same brain. Outside the restaurant window it had started to sleet, and under the orange street lights, the wet flakes looked like punctuation marks.
Re-reading this short story eight months after reading it for the first time, my initial tepidness about the story – nicely written but not earth-shaking, somewhat insubstantial and skinny – gave way to a more affectionate and warmer sentiment, charmed I was by the effervescence of Rooney’s prose and the amusingly unhinged dialogues dashed with a couple of witty turns of phrase that made me chuckle (growing older I seem to develop a soft spot for whatever makes me laugh).
Mr Salary is a playful and tender rom-com wrapped up in a stylish jacket of which Rooney ruthlessly subverts the conventional sweetness by peppering it with illness, death and daddy issues. Sukie (24) and Nathan (38) illustrate that it is an illusion to neatly compartimentalise feelings and relationships by clear denominations of roles as a father, a daughter, a friend or a lover and that reality can be far more fluid and tousled. At certain moments in life, all that counts is being near to someone, to find comfort curling up in someone’s arms, to connect to someone who gently meets your basic needs, protects you and provides for you in your hour of need. To give yourself the permission to enjoy it while it lasts, even if such isn’t for long. To let the heart (and why not the whole body) triumph over common sense (would we even speak about a love story without that premise?). You can always cry later.
Kees van Dongen, Tango of the Archangel (1922)
My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all. If he left my line of sight for more than a few seconds, I couldn’t even remember what his face looked like.
Coming across these lines, their intensity made me wonder if Salley Rooney might qualify as a contemporary Robert Desnos, thinking of his famous poem I Have Dreamed of You so Much:
I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.
Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make your dear voice come alive again?
I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many days and years, I would surely become a shadow.
O scales of feeling.
I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up. I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and face of some passerby.
I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.
Comparing the fragment to the poem, why be fussy and entrench oneself in camp Desnos while one can have both? Even if Desnos’s dreamy surrealist romanticism resonates more with me than Rooney’s modern love song, why not be generous and just embrace her flashes of stylistic brilliance and wit? Boundless are the voices evocating the power of love and the myriad forms it can take. The bird is known by its note, and the man by his word. Whether liking her vocal timbre or not, Rooney’s voice adds a zippy tune to the jam-packed songbook of love.
The story can be read online here.
For an in-depth review that matches Rooney’s eloquence and which perfectly encapsulates the writing and the relationship quandaries of the story I heartily recommend reading Vishakha’s review.
Re-reading this short story eight months after reading it for the first time, my initial tepidness about the story – nicely written but not earth-shaking, somewhat insubstantial and skinny – gave way to a more affectionate and warmer sentiment, charmed I was by the effervescence of Rooney’s prose and the amusingly unhinged dialogues dashed with a couple of witty turns of phrase that made me chuckle (growing older I seem to develop a soft spot for whatever makes me laugh).
Mr Salary is a playful and tender rom-com wrapped up in a stylish jacket of which Rooney ruthlessly subverts the conventional sweetness by peppering it with illness, death and daddy issues. Sukie (24) and Nathan (38) illustrate that it is an illusion to neatly compartimentalise feelings and relationships by clear denominations of roles as a father, a daughter, a friend or a lover and that reality can be far more fluid and tousled. At certain moments in life, all that counts is being near to someone, to find comfort curling up in someone’s arms, to connect to someone who gently meets your basic needs, protects you and provides for you in your hour of need. To give yourself the permission to enjoy it while it lasts, even if such isn’t for long. To let the heart (and why not the whole body) triumph over common sense (would we even speak about a love story without that premise?). You can always cry later.
Kees van Dongen, Tango of the Archangel (1922)
My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all. If he left my line of sight for more than a few seconds, I couldn’t even remember what his face looked like.
Coming across these lines, their intensity made me wonder if Salley Rooney might qualify as a contemporary Robert Desnos, thinking of his famous poem I Have Dreamed of You so Much:
I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.
Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make your dear voice come alive again?
I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many days and years, I would surely become a shadow.
O scales of feeling.
I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up. I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and face of some passerby.
I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.
Comparing the fragment to the poem, why be fussy and entrench oneself in camp Desnos while one can have both? Even if Desnos’s dreamy surrealist romanticism resonates more with me than Rooney’s modern love song, why not be generous and just embrace her flashes of stylistic brilliance and wit? Boundless are the voices evocating the power of love and the myriad forms it can take. The bird is known by its note, and the man by his word. Whether liking her vocal timbre or not, Rooney’s voice adds a zippy tune to the jam-packed songbook of love.
The story can be read online here.
For an in-depth review that matches Rooney’s eloquence and which perfectly encapsulates the writing and the relationship quandaries of the story I heartily recommend reading Vishakha’s review.
February 17, 2019
What is it about her writing that makes it so absorbing? My only complaint is that this was much too short.
October 2, 2025
Mr Salary was first published in Granta, then later released in 2019 as part of Faber Stories - a series which highlights the best writers of short fiction.
Sally kept me engaged from beginning to end. She certainly has a talent for developing chemistry between characters! I loved the sharp dialogue and banter. Characters arrived fully formed with fascinating backstories that quickly worked their way into the narrative. Everybody is real and flawed and believable.
The story follows Sukie, who arrives back in Dublin for Christmas. Nathan, an older man she previously lived with, picks her up from the airport. It seems apparent she has feelings, perhaps an infatuation with him.
“I didn’t know what the aftershave was called but I knew what the bottle looked like. I saw it in drugstores sometimes and if I was having a bad day I let myself screw the cap off.”
Sukie's mother died shortly after giving birth and her father, Frank, struggled with addiction. She had nowhere else to go until she went to live with Nathan, a distant family friend.
Her father, Frank, now battling leukemia, is not doing too well. He calls Nathan, "Mr Salary" - due to his income. It’s Nathan's ability to spend that income which occasionally gave me ‘sugar daddy’ vibes in regard to his relationship with Sukie. But damn, Sally Rooney knows how to ramp up the tension between her leads!
It’s an absorbing story that tackles illness, death, family and the complexities of relationships. The ending was abrupt and left me wanting more – but it worked and I couldn’t help pondering what happens next and asking myself various questions: Will Sukie stay in Dublin this time? Will they eventually hook up? It’s a huge case of will they or won’t they.
Mr Salary can be easily read in a single sitting. It has me wanting to read her novels in future.
Sally kept me engaged from beginning to end. She certainly has a talent for developing chemistry between characters! I loved the sharp dialogue and banter. Characters arrived fully formed with fascinating backstories that quickly worked their way into the narrative. Everybody is real and flawed and believable.
The story follows Sukie, who arrives back in Dublin for Christmas. Nathan, an older man she previously lived with, picks her up from the airport. It seems apparent she has feelings, perhaps an infatuation with him.
“I didn’t know what the aftershave was called but I knew what the bottle looked like. I saw it in drugstores sometimes and if I was having a bad day I let myself screw the cap off.”
Sukie's mother died shortly after giving birth and her father, Frank, struggled with addiction. She had nowhere else to go until she went to live with Nathan, a distant family friend.
Her father, Frank, now battling leukemia, is not doing too well. He calls Nathan, "Mr Salary" - due to his income. It’s Nathan's ability to spend that income which occasionally gave me ‘sugar daddy’ vibes in regard to his relationship with Sukie. But damn, Sally Rooney knows how to ramp up the tension between her leads!
It’s an absorbing story that tackles illness, death, family and the complexities of relationships. The ending was abrupt and left me wanting more – but it worked and I couldn’t help pondering what happens next and asking myself various questions: Will Sukie stay in Dublin this time? Will they eventually hook up? It’s a huge case of will they or won’t they.
Mr Salary can be easily read in a single sitting. It has me wanting to read her novels in future.
January 25, 2025
I just love her writing and her flawed characters.
This one was no different.
This is the story of a young woman and a guy in his 30s who are related but somehow ended up taking care of each other.
Flawed relationship. One falling for the other too hard. The other a bit aloof but neither rejecting the attention.
The endings are abrupt in her stories.
However, I like them.
Reading her stories is like I am watching real life people and I feel like I know their secrets and by that I know them and I accept them as they are.
Like Murakami's stories, this one make me know the characters well but not well enough that there's no mystery left.
I can have my own endings with their stories. However, it's just perfect as they are.
We don't need to know every ending, do we?
This one was no different.
This is the story of a young woman and a guy in his 30s who are related but somehow ended up taking care of each other.
Flawed relationship. One falling for the other too hard. The other a bit aloof but neither rejecting the attention.
The endings are abrupt in her stories.
However, I like them.
Reading her stories is like I am watching real life people and I feel like I know their secrets and by that I know them and I accept them as they are.
Like Murakami's stories, this one make me know the characters well but not well enough that there's no mystery left.
I can have my own endings with their stories. However, it's just perfect as they are.
We don't need to know every ending, do we?
April 25, 2019
Electra’s Hidden Talent
I suppose I’m the wrong generation, with the wrong aesthetic, and an inadequate ability to adapt to what is now hip (note my archaic expression). Whatever others see in Ms Rooney’s Style and intent eludes me entirely. Is this sordid tale of an intense Electra Complex typical of her oeuvre? If so, I intend to avoid any more of her work in the interests of self-preservation. It actually put me off reading for several days. And that hasn’t happened for decades.
I suppose I’m the wrong generation, with the wrong aesthetic, and an inadequate ability to adapt to what is now hip (note my archaic expression). Whatever others see in Ms Rooney’s Style and intent eludes me entirely. Is this sordid tale of an intense Electra Complex typical of her oeuvre? If so, I intend to avoid any more of her work in the interests of self-preservation. It actually put me off reading for several days. And that hasn’t happened for decades.
September 28, 2021
This is my first (and not an ideal) encounter with Sally Rooney's writing, a short story about the possibility of romance complicated by unrequited love and disparity in ages. There is mutual affection and a lot more between the two main characters, Sukie and Nathan, and you can feel this electricity in their slick banter. Sukie's motivations have been laid out well - it is evident that the lack of emotional stability during her childhood has made her cling to Nathan, a father figure. Her general frigidness is a defense against her emotional vulnerability and there's a sense of pride in this admission.
Nathan, touching his 40's, prefers to stay away from this romantic entanglement, flushed with feelings yet unwilling to cross the divide of age which separates them.
Rooney's writing is smooth and taut, and sprinkled with metaphors like nuts on a Christmas cake. The casualness is a carefully constructed veneer, veiling the intense longing of 24-year-old Sukie from whose frame of reference the reader views the relationship. In fact, the story is very well-crafted -- everything seems clever and easygoing, the sharp dialogues are a pleasure (and probably too cool to be contained within punctuation marks). I couldn't help being affected by her craft, her words strung together in simple sentences could build up such yearning and complexity. Rooney also explores the theme of death which is ordinary and fascinating but puts into perspective the urgency of clasping on to love and life.
Overall, I found it absorbing yet I can't say it was memorable. Apart from the effortless writing, I couldn't salvage much from this brief experience.
The story can be read here, hardly a 10 min affair.
https://granta.com/mr-salary/
P.S.: After reading Théodore's comment, I was mulling over any irrelevant descriptions in the story and I remembered the part about them watching Twin Peaks over the weekend -- a detail I thought superfluous at first, but now I think it fits in with the story because of the father-figure angle. Maybe I am over analyzing and its connection with the story may seem contrived to other readers; I got excited because I'm a huge Twin Peaks fan, so kindly excuse this eagerness on my part.
Emotionally, I saw myself as a smooth, hard little ball. He couldn’t get purchase on me. I just rolled away.
Nathan, touching his 40's, prefers to stay away from this romantic entanglement, flushed with feelings yet unwilling to cross the divide of age which separates them.
Rooney's writing is smooth and taut, and sprinkled with metaphors like nuts on a Christmas cake. The casualness is a carefully constructed veneer, veiling the intense longing of 24-year-old Sukie from whose frame of reference the reader views the relationship. In fact, the story is very well-crafted -- everything seems clever and easygoing, the sharp dialogues are a pleasure (and probably too cool to be contained within punctuation marks). I couldn't help being affected by her craft, her words strung together in simple sentences could build up such yearning and complexity. Rooney also explores the theme of death which is ordinary and fascinating but puts into perspective the urgency of clasping on to love and life.
Overall, I found it absorbing yet I can't say it was memorable. Apart from the effortless writing, I couldn't salvage much from this brief experience.
The story can be read here, hardly a 10 min affair.
https://granta.com/mr-salary/
P.S.: After reading Théodore's comment, I was mulling over any irrelevant descriptions in the story and I remembered the part about them watching Twin Peaks over the weekend -- a detail I thought superfluous at first, but now I think it fits in with the story because of the father-figure angle. Maybe I am over analyzing and its connection with the story may seem contrived to other readers; I got excited because I'm a huge Twin Peaks fan, so kindly excuse this eagerness on my part.
![Profile Image for Imme [trying to crawl out of hiatus] van Gorp.](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1700013408i%2F101358081._UX200_CR0%2C0%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
October 26, 2023
|| 2.0 stars ||
This is the first thing I have ever read by this author and I hope it will be my last. Of course I already knew about her infamous habit of writing without quotations marks, but jesus, it’s even more aggravating to read than I imagined it would be. It’s just so wholly unnecessary that it truly pisses me off.
The story itself wasn’t bad… but I don’t think there actually was that much of an actual story to speak of? And even if you argue that there was, we definitely did not get a resolution to any part of it.
Also, Sukie and Nathan’s relationship was just weird and I don’t think I get what it was trying to be. Like, was it meant to be creepy or cute? I genuinely can’t tell. All I know for sure is that this chick had some serious daddy issues.
Lastly, the writing was literally the most stilted thing ever: The characters talked like robots and the inner monologue was simply emotionless.
This is the first thing I have ever read by this author and I hope it will be my last. Of course I already knew about her infamous habit of writing without quotations marks, but jesus, it’s even more aggravating to read than I imagined it would be. It’s just so wholly unnecessary that it truly pisses me off.
The story itself wasn’t bad… but I don’t think there actually was that much of an actual story to speak of? And even if you argue that there was, we definitely did not get a resolution to any part of it.
Also, Sukie and Nathan’s relationship was just weird and I don’t think I get what it was trying to be. Like, was it meant to be creepy or cute? I genuinely can’t tell. All I know for sure is that this chick had some serious daddy issues.
Lastly, the writing was literally the most stilted thing ever: The characters talked like robots and the inner monologue was simply emotionless.
March 26, 2024
sometimes i shouldn’t venture out of my confort zone. thanks to me, now i feel kinda stupid for not grasping the meaning behind this if there ever was one, to begin with
” I had stood there waiting to see the body in the river, ignoring the real living bodies all around me, as if death was more of a miracle than life was. I was a cold customer. It was too cold to think of things all the way through.”
November 5, 2023
So where’s the actual story?
April 2, 2022
Okay, please bear with me (and thank you all for your patience). In my own very impatient effort to somehow patiently wait (if that makes sense) for my copy of Beautiful World to arrive, I very bizarrely scoured the internet in search of any other Rooney (yes yes, I certainly admit to a not so mild obsession) I might be able to read in the meantime.
And: TA-DA! I stumbled upon Mr Salary, a (sadly super) short story that sees 21-year-old Sukie just returning from Boston in order to be closer to her distant, alcoholic, and verbally abusive father, Frank, who is undergoing intensive chemotherapy and is not expected to live for long. 34-year-old Nathan is her support system. Through family connections, it was arranged for her to live with him and thus reduce her living expenses while studying. Sukie is lost, adrift. But there is enough evidence to suggest that Nathan feels the same way, and this is what binds them together, ever so delicately and powerfully.
This is as good a (paper-)place as any to start off with, for anyone wanting to ‘test the waters’, see whether Rooney strikes a chord or not. It is, naturally, a moment’s flash of her fictional brilliance: it does what – though probably more than – a short story of around 20 pages can be expected to do.
Rooney’s vision is there, in all of it:
– the ubiquitous preoccupation with normalcy, with being perceived as normal: at the standard level of their existence, the characters seem to be leading a life that ticks all the boxes of societal expectations, but they are all-too-aware that this is not the case. On the one hand, and by implication, they tend to be perpetually at grips with non-recognition. On the other, they realise that there is something inescapable in the desires, urges, emotions that define them and their way of being in the world.
– a resounding sense of the counterintuitive messiness of relationships. Some of the characters’ ways in relationships might indeed come across as preposterous: why does Nathan sleep with other-and-always-different women if he is so obviously in love with Sukie? What makes him refrain from taking their shared intimacy and affection to the next level? Rooney’s characters are exceptionally layered, a contradiction to themselves. Intertwining forces inform their fragmentary movements. They are equally deep, inconsistent, passionate, capable of limitless love and (self-)destruction.
– an intensity of feeling – ranging from care to lust – that is very attentive to our contemporary sensibility, firmly grounded in the paroxysmal and palpable qualities of the physical. Rooney’s writing itself is obsessed with exploring the possibility of establishing real connection with people, in a world that feels alienatingly disconnected, and that appears to make no solid sense for those experiencing it. She does sexual intimacy like no other contemporary writer that I have as yet read.
‘My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all. If he left my line of sight for more than a few seconds, I couldn’t even remember what his face looked like.’
‘I found his distraction comforting. In a way I wanted to live inside it, as if it was a place of its own, where he would never notice I had entered.’
In this moment, I am reminded of the recent 2018 filmic adaptation of A Star is Born, with Bradley Cooper urgently and lovingly reminding Lady Gaga that real talent is about having something to say and finding a way to say it – wanting to say it at all costs. And that this is far more than can be said of the many ‘stars’ out there (fictive or non-fictive).
Rooney is one such real contemporary talent.
5 stars (obviously-and-predictably).
And: TA-DA! I stumbled upon Mr Salary, a (sadly super) short story that sees 21-year-old Sukie just returning from Boston in order to be closer to her distant, alcoholic, and verbally abusive father, Frank, who is undergoing intensive chemotherapy and is not expected to live for long. 34-year-old Nathan is her support system. Through family connections, it was arranged for her to live with him and thus reduce her living expenses while studying. Sukie is lost, adrift. But there is enough evidence to suggest that Nathan feels the same way, and this is what binds them together, ever so delicately and powerfully.
This is as good a (paper-)place as any to start off with, for anyone wanting to ‘test the waters’, see whether Rooney strikes a chord or not. It is, naturally, a moment’s flash of her fictional brilliance: it does what – though probably more than – a short story of around 20 pages can be expected to do.
Rooney’s vision is there, in all of it:
– the ubiquitous preoccupation with normalcy, with being perceived as normal: at the standard level of their existence, the characters seem to be leading a life that ticks all the boxes of societal expectations, but they are all-too-aware that this is not the case. On the one hand, and by implication, they tend to be perpetually at grips with non-recognition. On the other, they realise that there is something inescapable in the desires, urges, emotions that define them and their way of being in the world.
– a resounding sense of the counterintuitive messiness of relationships. Some of the characters’ ways in relationships might indeed come across as preposterous: why does Nathan sleep with other-and-always-different women if he is so obviously in love with Sukie? What makes him refrain from taking their shared intimacy and affection to the next level? Rooney’s characters are exceptionally layered, a contradiction to themselves. Intertwining forces inform their fragmentary movements. They are equally deep, inconsistent, passionate, capable of limitless love and (self-)destruction.
– an intensity of feeling – ranging from care to lust – that is very attentive to our contemporary sensibility, firmly grounded in the paroxysmal and palpable qualities of the physical. Rooney’s writing itself is obsessed with exploring the possibility of establishing real connection with people, in a world that feels alienatingly disconnected, and that appears to make no solid sense for those experiencing it. She does sexual intimacy like no other contemporary writer that I have as yet read.
‘My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all. If he left my line of sight for more than a few seconds, I couldn’t even remember what his face looked like.’
‘I found his distraction comforting. In a way I wanted to live inside it, as if it was a place of its own, where he would never notice I had entered.’
In this moment, I am reminded of the recent 2018 filmic adaptation of A Star is Born, with Bradley Cooper urgently and lovingly reminding Lady Gaga that real talent is about having something to say and finding a way to say it – wanting to say it at all costs. And that this is far more than can be said of the many ‘stars’ out there (fictive or non-fictive).
Rooney is one such real contemporary talent.
5 stars (obviously-and-predictably).
December 16, 2018
Preceding both of her novels (to date), Mr Salary reads like a dummy run to Sally Rooney’s debut novel, Conversations with Friends, being quite similar in premise/characters/themes: a twentysomething student falls for a thirtysomething professional - complex relationshiperies ensue. Except, this being a short story, Mr Salary doesn’t explore the complexities of such a relationship and ends before that can happen.
That said, I still really enjoyed it. The dialogue is great, it’s immediately believable that Sukie and Nathan are years-long friends and you get a strong sense of the unspoken attraction crackling between the two, heightened by the forbidden fruit aspect. Rooney’s writing is as accomplished and smooth to read as always and I enjoyed the ever-present, tangible darkness shimmering beneath the misleadingly easy atmosphere of two friends reuniting.
It’s a little too short but if, like me, you’re one of Sally Rooney’s many new fans she’s gotten this year after her incredible book, Normal People, was published, not to mention long-listed for the Booker Prize, you’ll definitely want to read this while we all wait impatiently for her next novel!
Read it, fo’ free, here: https://lithub.com/a-prodigal-daughte...
That said, I still really enjoyed it. The dialogue is great, it’s immediately believable that Sukie and Nathan are years-long friends and you get a strong sense of the unspoken attraction crackling between the two, heightened by the forbidden fruit aspect. Rooney’s writing is as accomplished and smooth to read as always and I enjoyed the ever-present, tangible darkness shimmering beneath the misleadingly easy atmosphere of two friends reuniting.
It’s a little too short but if, like me, you’re one of Sally Rooney’s many new fans she’s gotten this year after her incredible book, Normal People, was published, not to mention long-listed for the Booker Prize, you’ll definitely want to read this while we all wait impatiently for her next novel!
Read it, fo’ free, here: https://lithub.com/a-prodigal-daughte...
October 25, 2023
what was this idk don’t ask me
November 19, 2021
WHY. WAS. IT. SO. SHORT ??
i'm starved ma'am, you need to feed me :'
i'm starved ma'am, you need to feed me :'
October 28, 2023
in defense of sally rooney’s writing:
i’ve heard a lot of people dislike rooney for her writing. specifically, the lack of quotation marks. and i get it, it’s different. but it’s so so good.
most people are taught to write very formally in school, and from there on out, writing is either formal or informal. except that it’s not, especially not in books or stories or creative literature. here, it can be anything it wants to be.
hell, there are even literary terms just for atypical use of grammar.
grammar and language exist just for us to be able to effectively communicate. there are so many ways to communicate a point, and the grammar, the tone, the format, anything and everything, can communicate a point, even moreso than just saying something.
and rooney does this better than any other author i’ve read yet this year.
the lack of quotation marks doesn’t make the dialogue unclear—it’s easy to tell what is meant to be dialogue and what isn’t—but what it does do is it takes the emphasis off the dialogue.
ever gotten bored of whatever you’re reading and skimmed paragraphs to get to the next chunk of dialogue? it’s because it’s more important. the interesting stuff happens in the dialogue.
so you see how the story changes when you take the importance out of what the characters say. how that changes how you have to view them as a reader.
another effect of this is that it creates a bit more distance between the reader and the characters. i really like how rooney does this, and it’s my favorite perspective to experience characters, but more specifically, the relationship in this short story is very much morally ambiguous. and that’s on purpose, because rooney never puts the characters through a lens that would make the relationship seem wrong or uncomfortable, even though it might to us.
so you see how she doesn’t use quotation marks, but that mirrors the point she’s trying to make and how she’s trying to make it.
well, that’s my two cents on it, anyways.
i’ve heard a lot of people dislike rooney for her writing. specifically, the lack of quotation marks. and i get it, it’s different. but it’s so so good.
most people are taught to write very formally in school, and from there on out, writing is either formal or informal. except that it’s not, especially not in books or stories or creative literature. here, it can be anything it wants to be.
hell, there are even literary terms just for atypical use of grammar.
grammar and language exist just for us to be able to effectively communicate. there are so many ways to communicate a point, and the grammar, the tone, the format, anything and everything, can communicate a point, even moreso than just saying something.
and rooney does this better than any other author i’ve read yet this year.
the lack of quotation marks doesn’t make the dialogue unclear—it’s easy to tell what is meant to be dialogue and what isn’t—but what it does do is it takes the emphasis off the dialogue.
ever gotten bored of whatever you’re reading and skimmed paragraphs to get to the next chunk of dialogue? it’s because it’s more important. the interesting stuff happens in the dialogue.
so you see how the story changes when you take the importance out of what the characters say. how that changes how you have to view them as a reader.
another effect of this is that it creates a bit more distance between the reader and the characters. i really like how rooney does this, and it’s my favorite perspective to experience characters, but more specifically, the relationship in this short story is very much morally ambiguous. and that’s on purpose, because rooney never puts the characters through a lens that would make the relationship seem wrong or uncomfortable, even though it might to us.
so you see how she doesn’t use quotation marks, but that mirrors the point she’s trying to make and how she’s trying to make it.
well, that’s my two cents on it, anyways.
July 9, 2019
I am going to read everything this woman writes.
December 21, 2025
i surprisingly like you, have a cupcake
November 28, 2023
"My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all."
Thats what loving a red flag feels like girl. You don't need sex you need therapy.
Sometimes I hate myself for being such a curious little bitch.
Thats what loving a red flag feels like girl. You don't need sex you need therapy.
Sometimes I hate myself for being such a curious little bitch.
November 7, 2022
و كأن الموت هو المعجزة و ليس الحياة
الحياة مجرد زبون قديم مضمون
سوكي فتاة ايرلندية يتيمة الام مع اب منشغل عنها؛ تتربي بين الأصدقاء و الاقارب؛ تضطرها الظروف المادية للعيش في اثناء الجامعه مع ناثان:نسيب ثري لاسرتها يكبرها بخمسة عشر عام؛ تدوم استضافه لها ثلاث اعوام بدل ٣ شهور و تنشأ بينهما علاقة عميقة ودودة محترمة و يظل ناثان يدعمها مالياَ و يدللها و يرعاهاو يعاملها ببساطة كأنها: ابنة اخته
كان كل منا مُتوقعاً بالنسبة للاخر؛ "
" كأننا نصفين لعقل واحد
تقع هي في حبه حتي الثمالة و يظل هو لسنوات يصد حبها بلطف مؤكداً لها بحكمته الاربعينية: انها فكرة سيئة
تحاول ان تستمر بحياتها بعيدا عنه في بوسطن و تعمل و ترتبط؛ و لكنه يحتل مركزا ثابتا في قلبها و عقلها؛ و تصف لنا القصة عودتها من بوسطن لرؤية والدها المحتضر ؛ و استقبال ناثان لها؛فهل تتغير علاقتهما؟
اهم مايميز النوفيلا ذات ال٣٣ صفحة؛ اسلوبها السلس المنساب؛ كثيفة المشاعر؛ غنية الشخصيات ذات بناء نفصيلي اقرب للرواية في أقل عدد من الصفحات
و تؤكد لنا القصة ان :الاستمرار أحياناً يصبح انجاز فوق قدرة البشر
الحياة مجرد زبون قديم مضمون
سوكي فتاة ايرلندية يتيمة الام مع اب منشغل عنها؛ تتربي بين الأصدقاء و الاقارب؛ تضطرها الظروف المادية للعيش في اثناء الجامعه مع ناثان:نسيب ثري لاسرتها يكبرها بخمسة عشر عام؛ تدوم استضافه لها ثلاث اعوام بدل ٣ شهور و تنشأ بينهما علاقة عميقة ودودة محترمة و يظل ناثان يدعمها مالياَ و يدللها و يرعاهاو يعاملها ببساطة كأنها: ابنة اخته
كان كل منا مُتوقعاً بالنسبة للاخر؛ "
" كأننا نصفين لعقل واحد
تقع هي في حبه حتي الثمالة و يظل هو لسنوات يصد حبها بلطف مؤكداً لها بحكمته الاربعينية: انها فكرة سيئة
تحاول ان تستمر بحياتها بعيدا عنه في بوسطن و تعمل و ترتبط؛ و لكنه يحتل مركزا ثابتا في قلبها و عقلها؛ و تصف لنا القصة عودتها من بوسطن لرؤية والدها المحتضر ؛ و استقبال ناثان لها؛فهل تتغير علاقتهما؟
اهم مايميز النوفيلا ذات ال٣٣ صفحة؛ اسلوبها السلس المنساب؛ كثيفة المشاعر؛ غنية الشخصيات ذات بناء نفصيلي اقرب للرواية في أقل عدد من الصفحات
و تؤكد لنا القصة ان :الاستمرار أحياناً يصبح انجاز فوق قدرة البشر
February 27, 2019
I fucking loved this - this is my professional opinion as a bookseller.
December 24, 2023
I decided to start reading Sally Rooney's novels so I could join the bandwagon, but I didn't know where to begin, so I chose her short fiction at random, and oh boy, this 20-page short story psyched me up so much. I adored her portrayal of the flawed main character, as well as the monologues. I am blown away. I'm sure I'll be reading more of her books in the near future.
January 2, 2021
WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FIFTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2020 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards, because i have not compiled as many as usual this year.
IN ADDITION, this may be the last year i do this project since GR has already deleted the pages for several of the stories i've read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. because i don't have a lot of time to waste, i'm not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case gr decides to scrap 'em again. 2020 has left me utterly wrung out and i apologize for what's left of me. i am doing my best.
DECEMBER 30: MR. SALARY - SALLY ROONEY
oh, man. this is such a tender and vulnerable love story. because the reader only gets the female POV, it's also a little painful and uncertain, trying to read between the lines of his words and actions; their shared past, not knowing what he's thinking or feeling, trying to gauge his level of investment and unsure whether we should be feeling sorry for her or not. which, basically, puts us in the same emotional boat as the protagonist; spinning in the insecurity of the relationship. deft and authentic bones, here.
i read one of her short stories last year for this project (don't go looking for it, it's one of the reviews goodreads DELETED, before putting the book back up, so i COULD restore it, if i wasn't feeling so once bitten/twice shy about it. still debating whether it's worth my time to restore all the deleted reviews). in any case, this story makes me want to jump on the sally rooney train and read those two books everyone is always going nuts over.
it's also a CHRISTMAS story, sort of, which was an unexpected treat as i continue to grasp at festive feelings in this horrorshow of a year.
read it for free here
DECEMBER 1: PG - COURTNEY SUMMERS
DECEMBER 2: THE JUMPING MONKEY HILL - CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
DECEMBER 3: ORIGIN STORY - T. KINGFISHER
DECEMBER 4: THE GREAT SILENCE - TED CHIANG
DECEMBER 5: A CLEAN SWEEP WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS
DECEMBER 6: BORED WORLD - ANDY WEIR
DECEMBER 7: VAMPIRE - ROBERT COOVER
DECEMBER 8: A STATEMENT IN THE CASE - THEODORA GOSS
DECEMBER 9: STET - SARAH GAILEY
DECEMBER 10: MARGOT'S ROOM: EMILY CARROLL
DECEMBER 11: HORROR STORY - CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
DECEMBER 12: TERRAIN - GENEVIEVE VALENTINE
DECEMBER 13: IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY AGAIN - ZEN CHO
DECEMBER 14: GHOUL - GEORGE SAUNDERS
DECEMBER 15: DURING THE DANCE - MARK LAWRENCE
DECEMBER 16: CLEARING THE BONES - CELESTE NG
DECEMBER 17: THE WAITER'S WIFE - ZADIE SMITH
DECEMBER 18: DEMOLITION - FIONA MCFARLANE
DECEMBER 19: NO PERIOD - HARRY TURTLEDOVE
DECEMBER 20: DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE - GG
DECEMBER 21: RUB-A-DUB-DUB - TONY MILLIONAIRE
DECEMBER 22: HANSA AND GRETYL AND PIECE OF SHIT - REBECCA CURTIS
DECEMBER 23: BRIDESICLE - WILL MCINTOSH
DECEMBER 24: I, CTHULHU, OR, WHAT'S A TENTACLE-FACED THING LIKE ME DOING IN A SUNKEN CITY LIKE THIS (LATITUDE 47° 9' S, LONGITUDE 126° 43' W)? - NEIL GAIMAN
DECEMBER 25: CHRISTMAS TALE - MARK LAWRENCE
DECEMBER 26: THE MONSTERS OF HEAVEN - NATHAN BALLINGRUD
DECEMBER 27: TWO DREAMS ON TRAINS - ELIZABETH BEAR
DECEMBER 28: THE MARTIANS CLAIM CANADA - MARGARET ATWOOD
DECEMBER 29: UNDER THE WAVE - LAUREN GROFF
DECEMBER 31: A/S/L - EMMA CLINE
come to my blog!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FIFTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2020 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards, because i have not compiled as many as usual this year.
IN ADDITION, this may be the last year i do this project since GR has already deleted the pages for several of the stories i've read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. because i don't have a lot of time to waste, i'm not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case gr decides to scrap 'em again. 2020 has left me utterly wrung out and i apologize for what's left of me. i am doing my best.
DECEMBER 30: MR. SALARY - SALLY ROONEY
oh, man. this is such a tender and vulnerable love story. because the reader only gets the female POV, it's also a little painful and uncertain, trying to read between the lines of his words and actions; their shared past, not knowing what he's thinking or feeling, trying to gauge his level of investment and unsure whether we should be feeling sorry for her or not. which, basically, puts us in the same emotional boat as the protagonist; spinning in the insecurity of the relationship. deft and authentic bones, here.
i read one of her short stories last year for this project (don't go looking for it, it's one of the reviews goodreads DELETED, before putting the book back up, so i COULD restore it, if i wasn't feeling so once bitten/twice shy about it. still debating whether it's worth my time to restore all the deleted reviews). in any case, this story makes me want to jump on the sally rooney train and read those two books everyone is always going nuts over.
it's also a CHRISTMAS story, sort of, which was an unexpected treat as i continue to grasp at festive feelings in this horrorshow of a year.
read it for free here
DECEMBER 1: PG - COURTNEY SUMMERS
DECEMBER 2: THE JUMPING MONKEY HILL - CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
DECEMBER 3: ORIGIN STORY - T. KINGFISHER
DECEMBER 4: THE GREAT SILENCE - TED CHIANG
DECEMBER 5: A CLEAN SWEEP WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS
DECEMBER 6: BORED WORLD - ANDY WEIR
DECEMBER 7: VAMPIRE - ROBERT COOVER
DECEMBER 8: A STATEMENT IN THE CASE - THEODORA GOSS
DECEMBER 9: STET - SARAH GAILEY
DECEMBER 10: MARGOT'S ROOM: EMILY CARROLL
DECEMBER 11: HORROR STORY - CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
DECEMBER 12: TERRAIN - GENEVIEVE VALENTINE
DECEMBER 13: IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY AGAIN - ZEN CHO
DECEMBER 14: GHOUL - GEORGE SAUNDERS
DECEMBER 15: DURING THE DANCE - MARK LAWRENCE
DECEMBER 16: CLEARING THE BONES - CELESTE NG
DECEMBER 17: THE WAITER'S WIFE - ZADIE SMITH
DECEMBER 18: DEMOLITION - FIONA MCFARLANE
DECEMBER 19: NO PERIOD - HARRY TURTLEDOVE
DECEMBER 20: DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE - GG
DECEMBER 21: RUB-A-DUB-DUB - TONY MILLIONAIRE
DECEMBER 22: HANSA AND GRETYL AND PIECE OF SHIT - REBECCA CURTIS
DECEMBER 23: BRIDESICLE - WILL MCINTOSH
DECEMBER 24: I, CTHULHU, OR, WHAT'S A TENTACLE-FACED THING LIKE ME DOING IN A SUNKEN CITY LIKE THIS (LATITUDE 47° 9' S, LONGITUDE 126° 43' W)? - NEIL GAIMAN
DECEMBER 25: CHRISTMAS TALE - MARK LAWRENCE
DECEMBER 26: THE MONSTERS OF HEAVEN - NATHAN BALLINGRUD
DECEMBER 27: TWO DREAMS ON TRAINS - ELIZABETH BEAR
DECEMBER 28: THE MARTIANS CLAIM CANADA - MARGARET ATWOOD
DECEMBER 29: UNDER THE WAVE - LAUREN GROFF
DECEMBER 31: A/S/L - EMMA CLINE
come to my blog!
April 25, 2020
Too brief to care about any of the characters, but her other two were slow burns for me, so I'm sure this one would've been too if went on longer.
October 3, 2021
"My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all."
i had to read this for one of my classes... but now im low-key obsessed and want this to be a full-length novel, please and thank u😌
November 9, 2023
no bc wtf was this 😭 i know this was only 30 pages so i can't really judge but i'm going to anyway.
January 24, 2023
Sukie, a 24-year-old university student, is in love with Nathan, her guardian of sorts, who is 15 years older than her.
To me, it seems that the dominant emotion conveyed is coldness. The atmospheric writing made palpable the frosty air of winter at Christmas time. It metaphorically encapsulated the lack of warmth and nurturance in Sukie’s childhood marked by abandonment. Sukie is returning from Boston to Dublin in response to news of a family member’s impending death. Time, as Rooney described it, skimmed like ‘an ice skater.’After a hospital visit, Sukie calls herself a ‘cold customer,’ and is appalled by her own reaction to a rescue boat lifting a drowned object from the river.
This is a story about love. It is constrained by the wide age disparity between two people who have a deep affection for each other. One feels for Sukie who longs to be loved. Don’t we all? The reader gets a whiff of how their love will turn out right from the start when Nathan picks Sukie up from the airport and they are driving homeward. Rather skillful writing, as foreshadowed in this line: ‘The red brake lights of the car in front surfaced through the ice like a memory.’
This is my first exposure to Rooney’s writing. I rather like it. Big thanks to Ilse and Vishakha whose eloquent reviews led me to this story. It can be read here: Mr. Salary
To me, it seems that the dominant emotion conveyed is coldness. The atmospheric writing made palpable the frosty air of winter at Christmas time. It metaphorically encapsulated the lack of warmth and nurturance in Sukie’s childhood marked by abandonment. Sukie is returning from Boston to Dublin in response to news of a family member’s impending death. Time, as Rooney described it, skimmed like ‘an ice skater.’After a hospital visit, Sukie calls herself a ‘cold customer,’ and is appalled by her own reaction to a rescue boat lifting a drowned object from the river.
This is a story about love. It is constrained by the wide age disparity between two people who have a deep affection for each other. One feels for Sukie who longs to be loved. Don’t we all? The reader gets a whiff of how their love will turn out right from the start when Nathan picks Sukie up from the airport and they are driving homeward. Rather skillful writing, as foreshadowed in this line: ‘The red brake lights of the car in front surfaced through the ice like a memory.’
This is my first exposure to Rooney’s writing. I rather like it. Big thanks to Ilse and Vishakha whose eloquent reviews led me to this story. It can be read here: Mr. Salary
May 12, 2024
'my love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all.'
her being so bold the entire time litch asking him to have sex was pure comedy, pls i want more 🙏🏼
we were predictable to each other, like two halves of the same brain.
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