Sally Rooney refuses to make novel adaptation: 'books are where I belong'

Sally Rooney just decided she would not be pursuing her third novel, Beautiful World, to be converted into a film adaptation.

Breaking the cycle that her previous famous novels, Normal People and Conversation with Friends followed, she revealed to The New York Times that the 33-year-old author has no intentions of taking Beautiful World to the small screen.

“So far, I have decided not to accept any offers to option the rights for that book,” she said, adding, “I felt like it was just time to take a break from that and let the book be its own thing for a while.”

Rooney continued, “The experience of working on the first one (Normal People) had been, in so many ways, amazing — the team of people involved in it. But it did also feel like a really big job.”

“Then, when the show was broadcast, that felt like a lot, in terms of the amount of discourse that it generated and the amount of media attention. I felt that world was not where I belonged. I felt like, okay, now I know that my books are where I belong, and that’s all that I want to be doing,” she further noted.

Beautiful World is about two best friends, Alice and Eileen, who exchange emails with each other during the summer, detailing their life endeavors, talking about art, the world around them, friendship and their personal complicated love lives.