Sally Rooney's books leave U.K. shelves, and Britain is mostly worried about Paul Mescal's chain
As Sally Rooney's novels vanish from U.K. bookshops over her Palestine Action support, the nation's press locates the real story: the Normal People necklace.
British bookshops have filled the gap left by Sally Rooney's novels with a single silver chain on a velvet stand, and sources close to the situation say it is moving units. The books came off U.K. shelves after Rooney backed Palestine Action, a group the British government has banned as a terrorist organisation.
Rooney said she is "wholly prepared to accept the consequences." Almost nobody heard her. By Saturday the whole country was busy debating the clasp.
The question of whether the state should shape which novels its citizens can buy has been gently filed under "and in other news." It sits below a six-part podcast asking whether Connell would have texted back, and a forensic thread tracing the chain's movements from 2020 to the present day. One tabloid ran a timeline. Another ran a timeline of the first timeline. Free expression got a sidebar, and the sidebar got a smaller font.
"We sold six this morning," said one bookseller, gesturing at the stand. "People don't want to read about two quiet people failing to communicate. They want to wear it."
At press time, the chain had been asked for comment on Palestine Action and, in the finest Rooney tradition, said nothing for three hundred pages.
