In “Normal People” especially, Ms Rooney (who is still only 30) combined simplicity with sparkle.But her new book pushes her devotion to ordinariness to its logical extreme.She favours bland adjectives, such as “little”, “clear” and “thin”.When Alice and Felix visit Rome, which may well contain the most impressive collection of objets d’art in the world, the reader is told peremptorily that “Felix spent the morning wandering around the city looking at things”.Intellectually as well as stylistically, the tone is flat.Much of the book is given over to long, discursive email exchanges between Alice and Eileen, in which they observe that market capitalism is at odds with traditional conservatism, that plastic tat is ugly, and that the fall of the Soviet Union was momentous.Ms Rooney, an avowed Marxist, has implied in interviews that these views reflect her own.The problem is not that the ideas are right or wrong, but that they are predictable.The exchanges lack dialectical fizz as Alice and Eileen generally agree with one another.That may be because both are projections of paths Ms Rooney herself has followed, or might have: Alice, a bestselling novelist who is struggling with the ambush of early, unexpected fame; Eileen, the thwarted writer too timorous to put pen to paper.
尤其是在《正常人》中，年仅30岁的鲁尼将简洁与智慧闪光点结合在一起。但她的新书将她对平常的执着推向了逻辑的极致。她喜欢平淡的形容词，比如“小的”、“清澈的”和“瘦的”。当爱丽丝和菲利克斯参观罗马时，罗马可以说是收藏着世界上最令人印象深刻的艺术品，而读者被断然告知“菲利克斯整个上午都在城市里闲逛，随便看看”。无论是在内容上还是在文体上，基调都是平淡的。这本书的大部分篇幅都在写爱丽丝与艾琳之间冗长而杂乱无章的电子邮件往来，在这些邮件中她们聊到，市场资本主义与传统保守主义的格格不入，塑料纹身的丑陋，以及苏联解体的重大意义。鲁尼是一名公开的马克思主义者，她在采访中暗示，这些观点反映了她自己的观点。问题不在于这些想法是对是错，而在于它们是很老套乏味的。这些交流缺乏辩证的火花，因为爱丽丝和艾琳通常都同意对方的观点。可能是因为这两个人物都是鲁尼自己所走过的路线的投映，或可能走过的：畅销小说家爱丽丝正在与早期意外成名带来的麻烦作斗争；受挫的作家艾琳过于胆怯，以至于无法动笔。
暂无注释
