Why Feminists Love to Hate Sally Rooney

“Lying naked with her chin in her hand, reading poetry.” Jesus, here we go. I feel my hackles rise as I’m thrown into an arena where it’s me versus an imaginary other reader, who I needn’t bother describing, who likes this kind of thing. The spectators — men, male writers, all the dead noble poets we suffered through at university — are watching us in a fight to the death over what it means to be a woman writer, a woman reader. I find myself trying to prove to these crowds of imaginary men that I am not like my opponent, I am better, more serious, less cringe. This is the schizophrenic experience of being a young woman reading Sally Rooney.