At the Clinic by Sally Rooney

Connell and Marianne.

I didn’t care much for Sally Rooney’s Normal People, although the TV adaptation is miles better than the source material. But oddly enough, I’m starting to think I might prefer Rooney as a short-story writer rather than a novelist. Her trademark blend of tenderness, melancholy, and emotional awkwardness feels much more contained and digestible in a shorter form, where it doesn’t have the chance to spiral into the same narrative loops.

At the Clinic was written in 2016, two years before Normal People was published and turned Rooney into a literary celebrity. The story follows Connell and Marianne, familiar to anyone who’s read or watched Normal People, as they stumble through yet another chapter of young love and heartbreak. I’m not sure whether this piece was Rooney warming up for the novel or something that simply didn’t make the final cut, but either way, it’s an excellent standalone.

What really shines here is Rooney’s dialogue. Even this early in her career, she had already mastered a very specific kind of conversational realism. The kind that feels unpolished, hesitant and emotionally charged in all the right ways. Her characters don’t just talk to one another; they reveal themselves through the rhythm of their speech, the awkward pauses, the contradictions, and the little half-truths they let slip. The dialogue becomes the backbone of the story, shaping the pacing and the emotional temperature of every scene.

Rooney also shows a keen instinct for building characters who feel fully formed, even in just a few pages. Connell and Marianne don’t need lengthy backstories or heavy exposition.  Their personalities, anxieties, and desires emerge organically through how they speak and react to each other. Rooney lets their emotional lives surface gradually, giving the reader the sense of eavesdropping on something painfully real.

By the end, you can see the early blueprint of what would eventually become Normal People. However, At the Clinic also works beautifully on its own as a compact, emotionally rich story that highlights Rooney’s strengths in dialogue, character depth, and the complicated ways people try (and fail) to connect.

You can read this story HERE.