Beautiful World, Where Are You
Author(s): Sally Rooney
Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution 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?
The title of Sally Rooney's new novel is a line from a poem by Friedrich Schiller. Written in 1788, the poem describes similar circumstances to what we find ourselves experiencing in 2021; a world gripped by deep uncertainty and a world of social, political and environmental turmoil. The poem is considered a lament, but also as an invitation to reconsider our past. If you think that sounds awfully intellectual, well it is. After finishing this book I concluded that Sally Rooney is one smart lady and talented as well.
If you were a fan of Normal People and enjoyed the toing and froing of complicated love then you will not be disappointed. This new book is a hybrid of Rooney's two previous novels and she plays all her best cards, they come up trumps. Eileen, Felix, Alice and Sam are all Irish twenty somethings trying to keep a general malaise at bay. Much like the title hints, these characters are navigating life searching for a beautiful balance, however sometimes the bigger issues of our world bear heavily on their shoulders. They also have complex personalities and their path to romantic love is never conventional. Rooney clearly enjoys messing with the usual literary romantic troupes, in fact she throws them out the window completely.
There is something indescribable about Rooney's writing style, it is slow moving and introspective, and the worlds she creates are everyday, normal. Yet when you have finished one of Rooney's books you feel reluctant to leave it behind. I really enjoyed this new novel. Gabrielle
Product Information
Once again, Sally Rooney explores modern love, mental health, ideology, and class through her character’s relationships with each other. I loved the style and sentiment of this novel. Rooney’s writing allows readers to observe the people and events in the story so clearly that they can perceive how things feel. Alice is a writer recovering from a recent mental breakdown. Felix grew up in the small coastal town she’s moved to. Her best friend Eileen lives and works in Dublin. Eileen is reconnecting with her childhood friend Simon, who believes in God and works in politics. Other than a day at the beach, a short trip to Rome and a child’s birthday party, not much happens, but these protagonists learn so much about each other and themselves that by the last chapter their lives have changed. -Katrina, Collins Bookselllers Cottesloe
Sally Rooney is the author of the novels Conversations with Friends and Normal People. She was the winner of the Sunday Times/Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award in 2017. In 2018, Conversations with Friends was shortlisted for both the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize and Normal People was the Waterstones Book of the Year, won the Costa Novel Award and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Rooney won the Encore Award for Normal People in 2019. She was the editor of the Stinging Fly in 2018 and a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library from 2019-20. She was nominated for an Emmy for her work on the television adaptation of Normal People, which was broadcast on the BBC in 2020.
General Fields
- :
- : Faber & Faber
- : Faber & Faber
- : 0.363
- : 01 August 2021
- : {"length"=>["21.6"], "width"=>["13.5"], "units"=>["Centimeters"]}
- : books
Special Fields
- : Sally Rooney
- : Paperback
- : English
- : 823.92
- : near fine
- : 337
