“I need to take a picture of this for my wife. She absolutely adores Kenneth Williams.” We’re in the recently revamped performance gallery of the V&A, a dazzle of theatrical memorabilia. “This” is Kenneth Williams’s costume from Carry on Cleopatra, worn while protesting “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” And wielding the cameraphone is British novelist Edward Carey, visiting from his home in Texas to launch his eighth novel, Edith Holler. It’s an irresistible, darkly gothic story set in a theatre and full of the author’s trademark illustrations – so the gallery makes a fittingly immersive interview location.
The line, which on countless other occasions I have smugly strode past, took 45 minutes from joining to counter. With friends from out of town, I joined grumpily, unconvinced that the pastries – expensive, if delicious – would be worth the wait. At the end of the line, with nary a sheet of laminated dough in sight, for a moment it didn’t seem too late to leave. But soon we were hemmed in from behind by groups of tourists, parents with fidgety children, bored couples thumbing their phones. In Sydney this week, people queued for hours, from before first light, to be at the top of the queue when Lune opened its new flagship store. Unlike those poor sods who waited in the rain, we baked under full summer sun. All of us waiting, squinting and sweaty, for a supposedly better version of something we could get nearly anywhere else.
What draws us to or makes us abandon a queue? And why is it that some among us happily join them while others are constitutionally inclined to avoid lines at all costs?
Sally Rooney is a writer who keeps slipping out of the interpretive nets we readers manufacture. Whether she’s dodging stylistic expectations or showing us the sentimental depths beneath a cool surface, Rooney rings boldly true. I never wanted to leave these characters, and I wanted Rooney to keep telling me and showing me more about love.