I recently had to read a book by Sally Rooney in a work capacity, and my goodness that was half an hour of my life I’ll never get back. Come on, how could I be expected to read the whole darn thing when I’d already had the pleasure of Conversations with Friends and come to the conclusion that once you’ve read one book about people getting naked and saying stuff about the pointlessness of life, you’ve read them all?

Her writing is so blank that in parts it reads like a children’s starter book — Janet and John Get Naked and...