Concord 34 by Sally Rooney, 2016
The magic trick:
Accurately creating a character who is both self-aware and occasionally self-defeating
This is another story, like many we’ve looked at on this site, where you feel the author could have easily stretched a few places in the text out a bit and had a novel. It’s that rich, that good.
The story introduces us to Miriam. She’s just finished a graduate degree and returned home to an community of teenagers and older friends from when she was in high school. If that sounds like a recipe for depression, you’d be right.
Miriam acts in ways that we know she will regret. Yet she also has moments of tremendous self-reflection. In fact, you could argue that one of her strongest characteristics is a consistently honest, accurate self-assessment. How could she be both painfully self-aware and occasionally unable to avoid acting against her own self-interests? Well, that’s kind of the point.
And that’s quite a trick on Rooney’s part.
The selection:
We spent some evenings that summer in the caravan park, where Evan’s parents owned a mobile home. It had three tiny bedrooms and a rain-faded plastic plate beside the front door reading ‘Concord 34’. On the patch of concrete outside they had a small barbecue, which we used often. When it rained, we bought chips from the van outside the caravan park instead and sat inside to eat them and drink lukewarm beer.
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