Sally Rooney’s second novel follows Marianne and Connell from secondary school in a small Irish town through their years at Trinity College Dublin, tracing a relationship that repeatedly changes shape without ever quite releasing either of them.

They move between friendship, sex, estrangement, intimacy and dependence, while differences in class, social confidence and family life keep interrupting them. It ain't no romance as destiny, but rather an exploration of attachment. We see how people can know each other exceptionally well while remaining disastrous interpreters of what the other needs.

It's sharp on shame, status, coercion, emotional withholding how a private relationship can absorb the hierarchies surrounding them, projecting them within. Written in Rooney’s characteristically spare, close prose, it really is a great book. 

Faber & Faber, London, 2018. Sixth printing. Paperback. Moderate creasing and shelf wear to covers and spine; corners lightly rubbed. Internally clean and unmarked; binding firm. Good condition.