Rooney writes more stream of consciousness and this is more tightly bound, but the emotions and ways of being felt so similar." Exciting Times follows 22-year-old Ava as she leaves Ireland to teach in Hong Kong. I know everyone says this, but there are so many similarities I saw between this and Normal People. So while the storyline and characters didn't do it for me, I'm interested to see what Dolan puts out next. But there are nuances that made me literally stop reading and think about what Dolan had wrote. I think it's easy to dislike this and dismiss it on the surface, it's a young woman who can't make up her mind while living for free in someone's flat. Often when I read a queer novel some of it feels forced this was seamless. It felt authentic, less an added 'interesting' point, but a way of being that felt effortless.
Something small I enjoyed was the depiction of Ava's queerness. I was more interested in her thoughts and experiences with class than her relationships, to be honest, even as they played proxy for amplifying her feelings around status. This can be really interesting territory for a novel, but it didn't completely work for me here. The story centers on conflict within Ava, the main character. But the intellectual aura inserted across the novel felt taut and occasionally reaching. Politics, grammar, and morality are explored with quick jabs and sharp wording. The prose is interesting the way Dolan writes the dialogue is natural the conversations back home with family felt real in a way that many writing about calling home don't.
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