It’s pretty crazy how Sally Rooney has taken over the literary world. Like most of the planet, I’m currently reading Intermezzo, her latest book. And every so often I’ll hit a phrase in the book that makes my brain buzz and makes me aware of the fact that people all around the world are also getting stuck into it. There are 20-year old women in Los Angeles who are reading this book right now just like me.

And I can’t help but think that they’re not reading the same book as me. I don’t even mean the geographic stuff as the story travels around Dublin. I mean, there’s a bit early on where Rooney is talking about the courts and their “Gonzaga cohort” - it’s a very specific thing, but what does that even mean to someone from America?

Wittgenstein had this idea of ’language games’, where words can have a different meaning based on the context in which they’re used. So, for example, the word “chess” has a different meaning for a grandmaster than it does for a novice. Reading Intermezzo feels like that idea projected to a whole-ass book.

(And before anyone comes at me: I’m not suggesting I’m a grandmaster in this scenario. I’m sure there is plenty in this book that goes completely over my head as a middle-aged man).