Books and ArtsBook ReviewIrish fiction - the trouble with normalitySally Rooney's new novel pushes her technique to its logical extremeBeautiful World, Where Are You. By Sally Rooney.“Nothing odd will do long,” said Samuel Johnson of Laurence Sterne’s digressive novel “Tristram Shandy”.This verdict was misguided on two counts.“Tristram Shandy”is now regarded as one of the great achievements of 18th-century literature; meanwhile the novel, then in its infancy, developed into a form that teems with oddity.It is a repository of peculiar characters, settings and situations, flights of idiosyncratic language and jags of startling perception.By contrast, as their titles suggest, “Conversations with Friends” and “Normal People”, Sally Rooney’s first two books, focused on everyday aspects of life ― friendship, romance, growing up ― which they chronicled in limpid but unflashy prose.Both were acclaimed by critics, became bestsellers and have been adapted for television.In Ms Rooney’s stories, normality is not merely her subject matter.It is also a virtue to be cultivated, perhaps even the key to happiness.