Yet the reception of her novels has taken seasoned commentators beyond the usual literary compliments.

I have to discipline myself not to look at it, but obviously it’s on a very, very small scale – it’s not like you’re a Premier League football player,” she says, briskly. How does it feel to be on such a rollercoaster? “There’s a frisson of weirdness of seeing your name mentioned and someone you don’t know talking about you. Neatly and unobtrusively dressed, she talks rapidly in a manner that is simultaneously confident and self-deprecating. The woman who arrives to meet me at a stylish new coffee and yoga joint around the corner from the flat she shares with her maths teacher partner, is now all of 27 years old. It is also shortlisted for the Costa book awards. Though it didn’t make the Booker shortlist, it has just been announced as Waterstones book of the year and won Rooney the award for international author of 2018 at the Specsavers national book awards. Unlike Tartt or Smith, she already had a second novel ready to roll: in a rare state of excitability, the literary world held its breath for the arrival of Normal People, and before it had even been published it was longlisted for the Man Booker prize. It was an intensity of acclaim that happens once or twice in a generation, placing her alongside Donna Tartt or Zadie Smith as a writer who appeared to emerge fully formed, not only in her craft but as a literary celebrity and a mouthpiece for something in the culture that needed to be articulated. The history of fiction is littered with callow university novels, so what happened next was extraordinary: almost as soon as Conversations with Friends appeared in the spring of 2017, Rooney was being hailed as the voice of the millennials, a Snapchat Salinger.

Sally rooney books in order