Book Review: Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

I’d been in a terrible reading slump when I discovered Normal People this spring. I finished it in twelve hours. Thirsty for even more Sally Rooney, I quickly devoured her debut novel, Conversations with Friends. Rooney’s characters are unbelievably specific and relatable. Not perfect, but never flawed enough to be unlovable. They’re also kind of raunchy, but not in an embarrassing way. 

Rooney’s third novel, Beautiful World, Where are You features two best friends on the cusp of thirty; the beautiful but overlooked Eileen and the socially awkward Alice. Alice happens to be a successful author with two books under her belt. Sound familiar? 

Through Alice, Rooney shares her own experience as a millionaire novelist hailed as the ‘first great millennial author’. There is no mystery or nuance here, and I appreciate her candidness. Readers get a rare glimpse into a writer’s interior life. It’s strange, really, that writers don’t often write fiction about the lives of writers. Rooney implies why this may be in Beautiful World…

Alice’s success only further alienates her from the very world she struggles to understand and come to terms with in her work. After a stay at a mental health facility, she rents a seaside mini-mansion hours from Dublin, and soon hooks up with a warehouse worker named Felix. The actual hook up takes time, and you’re never quite sure how he feels about her, even after she takes him on a trip to Rome. 

Back in Dublin, Eileen reignites an ongoing will-they-won’t-they with the uber-religious Simon. They seem a perfect match almost right away, and the chemistry is through the roof...so what’s the problem? Just as with Rooney’s first two novels, we are dealing with characters who don’t know how to communicate their needs. Ah! There’s the rub.

This is the first novel I’ve encountered that addresses COVID-19 directly. As the characters themselves consider that they could very well be living in the end of the world, I found myself questioning why they didn’t act like it, then? If Eileen is so unfulfilled in her work as an editorial assistant, why doesn’t she just find a better job? If Simon is truly her person, then why doesn’t she just tell him how she feels? When all four love birds finally meet up toward the end, I almost enjoyed Felix’s menacing attempts to flip the clueless group on their heads. 

At this point, Felix is a real firecracker. Beautiful to watch, but dangerous to hold, especially for someone as vulnerable as Alice. As in Rooney’s other work, women are attracted to things and people that might hurt them. And hold themselves back from what could make them happy. 

Ah, but if it were easy, there would be no tension to write about. And the tension? It works. 

I liked Beautiful World, Where Are You, and if you’re a Rooney fan, you probably will too. I finished it in one day, and am still processing the optimistic ending. A happy-ish ending? In a Sally Rooney novel?

Maybe I’ve already said too much. 

Beautiful World, Where Are You was released September 7, 2021.
Find your copy here.