Rating: 91% | A- | ★★★★★ Warnings: + Sexual content Synopsis (from Goodreads): Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world? Spoiler-Free Review: One word to characterize this novel: optimistic. If you're staring at the previous sentence, letting your eyes flit upwards to the big bold letters on the image that read "Sally Rooney," and concluding that "yeah, this blogger is very clearly and very poorly trying to cover up the fact that she's very behind on her TBR and is now lying about reading this novel," I wouldn't blame you. I would react that way too if I'd heard "Sally Rooney" and "optimistic" in the same sentence before reading Beautiful World, Where Are You. But the fact is, Beautiful World, Where Are You is not your typical Rooney novel. It has all of the qualities of one—millennial disillusionment, aching depictions of relationships, visceral writing—except for a heart-wrenching ending. And in that way this novel stands out. Various debates have been had about the quality of Beautiful World, Where Are You and its characters. The novel is too superficial. The novel is too much of a thinly veiled retelling of Rooney's own life. The characters are annoying and despicable. But to a certain extent, these critiques are no different from the critiques of previous Rooney novels. Rooney's novels are not intended for enjoyment; they're meant to turn the reader inward, to confront the ills that are within the whole of humanity and all of its members. My soapbox is crumbling underneath me, so I'll keep it brief: Beautiful World, Where Are You is divisive and readers shouldn't expect to like it simply because they liked Normal People. This is a very different novel from Normal People, but no less worthwhile. The characters are certainly more complicated and more grating on the nerves at times, but I do believe that every reader can find some sort of thoughtful fulfillment in this story. And I can feel, even as I skim through my flagged passages, that this is a book that will only increase in power upon further re-reads. (Click "Read More" for spoilers.) Plot (26/30) Beginning (6/10), Middle (10/10), and End (10/10) There's an insistent slowness to Rooney's novels that always makes the beginnings seem longer than they are. In this case, it's a matter of trying to introduce and develop the main quartet—the Marianne-from-Normal People-esque Alice, the callous Felix, the lost Eileen, and the enigmatic Simon. Other reviewers have noted that this work is more "mature" than Rooney's works, and while I don't agree with that estimation—Rooney's works have always been a self-assured, self-contained type of immature to me—the older and more established main characters do create a noticeably different tone. The novel's pacing does not pick up until after Alice and Felix's Rome trip. Only then does Rooney dig into the meat of the dynamics between the characters, especially between Alice, Felix, and Eileen. And, of course, Rooney's dedication to contemporary social issues continues in this novel, with discussion surrounding Alice and Eileen's economic differences and Simon's Catholicism. But by far the strongest part of this novel is Rooney's ability to target people's most intimate insecurities with laser precision. And I almost want the worst to happen sooner, sooner rather than later, and if possible straight away, so at least I don't have to feel anxious about it anymore. Ultimately, the plot all comes together neatly but not without some struggling to fit the stiff puzzle pieces together. For me, Eileen and Simon are the heart of this story, and it is fitting that it ends with Eileen's email. It's a much more overt look towards the future than Rooney has attempted in previous works, and I question whether it's too heavy-handed or not. But again, there's a stunning optimism to this novel, simple in its baldness. Characters (25/30) Development (13/15) and Allure (12/15) Felix. Oh, what can I say about Felix's character? Best to first clarify that I found Alice, Eileen, and Simon to all be compelling and realistic characters. I wanted more exploration especially of the dynamic between Alice and Eileen, so much of which happens in the past tense that the climax of the story felt stifled, or perhaps precipitated upon an invisible iceberg. And Simon—oh. Many an "oh" was uttered in my dorm room while I nestled myself under my blanket between my 11 AM and 3 PM classes and read this novel. I disagree with the common opinion that Normal People is a romance, but I think the best way for me to understand those of that opinion is through the lens of Simon and Eileen's arc—Simon is what Connell has the potential to be. But Felix—I did not enjoy Felix's character at all. I'm not sure if I'm missing cultural context that might allow me to sympathize more with Felix, but overall he comes off as incredibly boorish and unsympathetic, especially in his interactions with Alice. And his final declaration of love for Alice is underwhelming and insincere. Primarily, I'm wondering if—in classic Sally Rooney fashion—there's a deeper meaning to Felix's callousness, something I'm missing. But at the end of it all, Felix's chapters were the ones I dreaded reading the most. Writing (20/20) Descriptions (10/10) and Flow (10/10) Rooney's writing is an acquired but, once acquired, permanent taste. As I mentioned above, Rooney's writing shines most when she is piercing, hammering at the hidden natures of the human psyche—the deepest desires, the darkest demands. What writer has not thought of themselves as Alice does? I was lonely and unhappy, and I didn't understand that those feelings were ordinary, that there was nothing singular about my loneliness, my unhappiness. Maybe if I had understood that, as I think I do now, at least a little bit, I would have never written those books, I would have never become this person. And as for the most divisive aspect of this novel—the emails—I confess I'm a fan of it. I think its ludicrous that anyone would communicate over email these days, but there is an earnestness and eagerness in Alice and Eileen's emails—one that belies the tension between them, perhaps contributing to the slightly brow-raising nature of the climax at Alice's house—that allows Rooney to expand the implications of her novel's messages. I particularly enjoyed Alice's meditations on the meaning of history: And then the twentieth century shook the watch and made history happen again. But can't we do that too, in another way? Closure/Set-Up (20/20)
Logic (10/10) and Allure/Closure (10/10) As Twitter user @jmsnftzptrck said, "can’t believe the answer to beautiful world where are you is a baby." And so everything circles back to the startled exclamation, "When the hell did Sally Rooney become optimistic?" But there is a loveliness in the ending, in the characters receiving everything they asked for. The answer to the eponymous question, Rooney implies, is that it was in front of us all along.
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