Beautiful World, Where Are You

Another masterclass in character writing, Beautiful World Where Are You takes a microscope to the intimate lives of two friends and their respective romantic partners. Filled with introspective deep dives into class, capitalism, privilege, and the flaws that we all carry with us, this was a great, albeit preachy, novel about nothing.

Alice and Eileen are best friends, but both outcasts in their own ways. Both from middle to lower class families, Eileen grew up in a difficult household with an overbearing older sister, a passive mother, and a father whose farm has fallen on financial difficulties. Unable to develop her own friendships save for one childhood friend, Simon, Eileen is depressed and alienated until she meets Alice in college, both becoming instant friends that will last a lifetime. Alice, coming from a poor background, finds flash-in-the-pan success as a writer when her first books becomes massively popular. This instant fame and wealth is alien to her, and results in a minor mental breakdown, leading her to take a break from work and live on the Irish coastline in a small town, 3 hours from her former home in Dublin. Here, she meets working class, rough around the edges Felix, who is both emotionally unavailable and particularly sensitive to the class divide between them. Through alternating chapters switching between Alice and Eileen's points of view, each separated by an email sent from one to the other, we get an intimate look into their relationships with similarly flawed men, Eileen with Simon, Alice with Felix, and the complex, often strained relationship between Eileen and Alice themselves.

Rooney is a character writer and I'm a character reader, a match made in heaven. So obviously I was going to love this book. I'll never stop being impressed with how complex and detailed the characters are, flaws and all. While I don't know anyone like any of these characters, they're written so vividly that I can't help but feel nostalgic in the sense that I KNOW them. The relationships between them are also so real, peppered with awkwardness, wit, and vulnerability. And this goes for all relationships on display, not just the romantic ones. I loved how the exchanges between Eileen and Alice felt so authentic to the way that long time best friends would communicate with each other, or the ways that Alice interacts with brand new people knowing how difficult she is to get along with. It was all just executed so flawlessly, it's no wonder I finished this entire book in a day.

But that's not to say that this is without its flaws. As others have written about this book, and really all books post "Normal People", Rooney seems to write the same book over and over. Some complex, witty Irish girl endlessly, awkwardly interacting with some emotionally unavailable Irish boy. And compared to Normal People, this book felt a bit more egregious in the sense that I didn't find Eileen or Alice to be distinct enough in personality. We are constantly told that Alice is frigid and appears to be stuck up, but her conversations felt indistinguishable from the ways Eileen interacted with people. Which is interesting because Felix and Simon were intentionally written to be almost exact opposites. The majority of the book, when Alice and Felix were separated from Eileen and Simon, I'll admit the chapters started to feel repetitive. Both couples kept having the same conversations and tensions over and over again, and this was not helped by the, frankly tedious and droll interstitial email chapters between Eileen and Alice. Preachy is an understatement, it felt like Rooney was just DYING to have an outlet to express her personal beliefs on religion, government, art, philosophy, etc. and I found them all to be pretty unbearable. But the book really picked back up when Eileen and Simon finally went to see Alice and meet Felix. It was here that all of the tensions and themes between all characters came to a head in a very satisfying way. All was laid bare in a raw, intimate way between all characters. I do think there were missed opportunities to dive deeper into some of the more interesting dynamics between the four characters, namely the ways in which Alice and Simon were very similar and Eileen and Felix came from similar backgrounds, these were touched on but I'd have loved to see them fleshed out more.

All in all, if you love Sally Rooney, obviously you're going to love this book. Anyone who appreciates good character writing will, but I do think it is not quite as good as some of her other works. I'm still a die-hard and will read everything she writes though.