Rooney, Sally

At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers; one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

When Frances leaves for Ireland to pursue a writing career, but soon her friendships begin to develop into strange intimacies, and she is desperate to reconcile her inner life.

"Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young--but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?"--OCLC.

High school students Connell and Marianne form an unlikely bond that they hide from other people. Connell is a popular football player and Marianne is lonely and private. When they attend Trinity College in Dublin, the roles switch and Marianne has a new social life while Connell shyly looks on from the outside. The two explore other people and possibilities but always return to each other. Then Marianne begins to self-destruct and Connell goes off to find meaning elsewhere, but soon they are both forced to decide how far they will go to save the other.