Black America Breaking News for the African American Community
Related Articles
Sally Rooney’s novels have long been criticized as insufficiently political, but reconciling ideology and storytelling has always been a thorny issue for writers.
In Sally Rooney’s novels, idealistic college students espouse Marxism despite never having read any of the ideology’s foundational texts; they advocate for radicalism while keeping up their grades and wrestling with deeply traditional romantic desires. They are startlingly realistic—but their role as political actors is much fuzzier. Indeed Rooney has long been criticized as insufficiently political. Mentions of leftist politics suffuse her works (Conversations With Friends, Normal People, and her new release Beautiful World, Where Are You), but although her characters aim to diagnose the ills of the system, Rooney herself barely addresses those issues. If she comes to any conclusions at all, they are situated at a much smaller level—personal realizations about individual, almost utopian systems of care among friends and lovers, not society as a whole.
According to Stacey Abrams, a politician, voting-rights activist, and romance author, politics and novel writing are interconnected. To do either well, she says, one must tell compelling stories with clear stakes. This guidance can explain where some more straightforwardly political novels fail—and where others succeed. Take Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered. The book, which considers the factors that led up to Donald Trump’s election, is timely and not much else. The characters are thinly veiled parables, and Kingsolver sacrifices storytelling at the altar of political representation. More successful are works like Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed. The book follows Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and focuses on well-realized characters who are steeped in public life. Ahmed writes about both his characters’ individuality and their place in the broader political ecosystem; each person is shaped by policy changes and has clear stakes in the upcoming election. Thus, Ahmed marries two of the political novel’s competing demands, producing a work that understands both systems and individuals.
Every Friday in the Books Briefing, we thread together Atlantic stories on books that share similar ideas. Know other book lovers who might like this guide? Forward them this email.
When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
What We’re Reading
Laura Peretti
Sally Rooney addresses her critics
“While a novelist may be Marxist, novels rarely are.”
📚 Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney
Hogarth Books
The small rebellions of Sally Rooney’s Normal People
“In Normal People, characters have different things at different times: money, social capital, looks. The novel suggests the possibility of a setup in which these advantages are shared and redistributed according to need. Call it a Marxism of the heart.”
📚 Normal People, by Rooney
📚 Conversations With Friends, by Rooney
Lauren Tamaki
The story behind Stacey Abrams’s fiction career
“I’m a good politician in part because I’m a very effective storyteller.”
📚 While Justice Sleeps, by Stacey Abrams
Alvaro Dominguez
Barbara Kingsolver’s superficial view of the American family in the Trump era
“This is the American-family novel as Sunday-morning talk show—a character drama with no real characters, only sound bites masquerading as human beings.”
📚 Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver
Martin Parr / Magnum
The political novel gets very, very specific
“Radiant Fugitives is a systems novel, not a domestic one; [Nawaaz] Ahmed cares more about reflecting life in a society than life in a contained set of familial relationships.”
📚 Radiant Fugitives, by Nawaaz Ahmed
About us: This week’s newsletter is written by Kate Cray. The book she’s reading next is The Right to Sex, by Amia Srinivasan.
Comments, questions, typos? Reply to this email to reach the Books Briefing team.
Did you get this newsletter from a friend? Sign yourself up.
Source link
