Realizing that my critique of Rooney is what the article by Andrea Chu tries to defuse, but heh, that was what I got from Normal People at the time, and I still stand by it. The fact that romance novels are by now so codified that they have to end in HEA (for example), or have the three acts structure, and that so many romance novel authors are very bad writers, does not take away from the fact that Rooney's Normal People is a romance novel where you have the class disparity as the obstacle (and it's, like, highlighted by some detail in a line before every conflict between the characters, yes, it's so blatant xD) ... like many romance novels; and the problem is even resolved at the end with the most acritical take on the publishing industry ever! Rooney's defenders say that it's something something capitalism critique that makes Rooney do it; I'd say then that every romance novel does it -__- A lot is projection, and as a reader of literary fic as well as genre/commercial fic, I'd rather have good, well-written and thought-out commercial novels taken seriously than saying that since Rooney writes pretty (read: she went to the right uni and frequented the right scenes to be considered serious) then she's more political and more literary than others.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2025-01-01 02:44 pm (UTC)Realizing that my critique of Rooney is what the article by Andrea Chu tries to defuse, but heh, that was what I got from Normal People at the time, and I still stand by it. The fact that romance novels are by now so codified that they have to end in HEA (for example), or have the three acts structure, and that so many romance novel authors are very bad writers, does not take away from the fact that Rooney's Normal People is a romance novel where you have the class disparity as the obstacle (and it's, like, highlighted by some detail in a line before every conflict between the characters, yes, it's so blatant xD) ... like many romance novels; and the problem is even resolved at the end with the most acritical take on the publishing industry ever! Rooney's defenders say that it's something something capitalism critique that makes Rooney do it; I'd say then that every romance novel does it -__- A lot is projection, and as a reader of literary fic as well as genre/commercial fic, I'd rather have good, well-written and thought-out commercial novels taken seriously than saying that since Rooney writes pretty (read: she went to the right uni and frequented the right scenes to be considered serious) then she's more political and more literary than others.