Can I put these in here? I say. 

Carly looks up from her phone and squints. The sun is in her eyes. She puts her hand up, casting a shadow over her face. Oh, she says, ya, go for it.

Cool, thanks, I say, dropping my phone and keys and wallet into her beach bag. It’s a big bag. There’s plenty of room. My things plop down next to a book. I pick it up and study the cover:

Normal People by Sally Rooney, I announce. 

Carly looks up again. Ya, she says. 

Any good? I say, flipping through the pages. There’s a bookmark inside. I stop on it and scan the page. 

Ya, she says, it’s interesting, I guess, different, she says. She wrote another book, too: Conversations With Friends. Heard of it?

No. 

It’s good. 

I close Normal People and look at the cover again. It’s green and blue. I’ve never read Sally Rooney, I say. 

Carly doesn’t say anything. She’s running her fingers through the sand now. I find the first page and sit down and start reading. Carly goes back to her phone. I read for a few minutes. 

She doesn’t use quotation marks? I say. 

Carly looks up. Like, you mean for dialogue? 

Yeh, I say. She doesn’t use quotation marks to show people talking?

Oh, Carly said. Ya, no.

Ever? I say, flipping through the pages.

I don’t think so, no. 

I stop on a page with dialogue tags — he said; she said — but no quotation marks. That’s unusual, I say. 

Ya? 

Yeh, I say. 

Unusual, yes, but not unheard of in literature. James Joyce didn’t always use quotation marks. Neither did Samuel Beckett. Neither did E.L. Doctorow, who said quotation marks aren’t necessary if the writer knows what she’s doing. (Because if done well, The Reader can tell when it’s dialogue.)

Ya she’s breaking the writing rules or whatever, Carly says. 

But then there it is, her work, published and accepted and celebrated: Normal People is a categorical success. It won the British Book Award and the Costa Book Award and was named the An Post Novel of the Year. And Hulu made it into a series. 

Sally Rooney wrote Normal People how she wanted to write it. And it made her famous. 

Yeh but “writing rules” is an oxymoron, I say.

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