- Bad luck, Normal People fans – Sally Rooney is stepping away from having any more of her books adapted for the screen
- The Irish author says she ‘didn’t belong’ in the world of TV
- “I felt like it was just time to take a break from that,” Rooney said of the decision not to base a TV show on her third novel
It was one of the biggest shows of the pandemic.
So it’s no wonder that fans are desperate for a new series like Normal People.
The show, which starred Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal as Marianne and Connell, was based on the 2018 novel by Sally Rooney.
But although her first book, Conversations With Friends was also adapted into a television series – featuring Joe Alwyn and Jemima Kirke – it appears that Rooney’s followers may be waiting a while for any more of her work to make it onto the small screen.
In a recent interview, the Irish author, 33, revealed how she “decided not to accept any offers to option the rights” for her third book, Beautiful World, Where Are You?, which hit the shelves in 2021.
When asked why not, Rooney replied, “I felt like it was just time to take a break from that and let the book be its own thing for a while.”
‘My books are all I want to be doing’
Further in the interview, Rooney confirmed that she hadn’t been as hands on with the Conversations With Friends script as she had with its predecessor, as she was working on her third book.
While that may explain why the series wasn’t as well received as Normal People had been, Rooney has no regrets about taking a step away from the limelight.
“The experience of working on [Normal People] had been, in so many ways, amazing – the team of people involved in it. But it did also feel like a really big job,” she said. “Then, when the show was broadcast, that felt like a lot in terms of the amount of discourse that it generated and the amount of media attention.
“I felt that world was not where I belonged. I felt like, ‘OK, now I know that my books are where I belong, and that’s all that I want to be doing.’”
