Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Beautiful World, Where Are You

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

284 reviews

alyssaherrington's review against another edition

emotional lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Sally Rooney’s ability to put emotion in word will always be a reason why i love her work. She so beautifully captured what it feels like to experience the contrast of every day life - feeling the magnitude of the world and how small it may make you feel, or the crux of thinking your own problems may be trivial in comparison to the greater multitude & how insincere it sometimes feels to care about who you’re hooking up with or who you love and your common relationships that make up your life. i thought this was a beautiful read that captured the nuances of various relationships you may have in your life and how they make you who you are.

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bookish_5280's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Sally Rooney has done it once again! I enjoyed Beautiful World, Where Are You even more than her other two novels, just because she was able to keep her incredible style and observations but redirected them to conversations around politics and beauty (and, of course, relationships). I loved the way that she used the emails between Alice and Eileen as a literary device--it provided a kind of break from the main plot, as well as allowing for a space for stunning, soulful meditations on the way that we take in beauty or aesthetics.

The streets were quiet and dark, and the air was oddly warm and still, and on the quays the office buildings were all lit up inside, and empty, and underneath everything, beneath the surface of everything, I began to feel it all over again--the nearness, the possibility of beauty, like a light radiating softly from behind the visible world, illuminating everything.

As with the other two books, personal relationships play a crucial role in the development of the plot and the general ideas discussed in the novel. I love the way that Rooney developed two full subplots/stories (Eileen and Simon, Alice and Felix), and then blended them into one cohesive narrative with stunningly real emotions, situations, and finally, a hopeful end.

I was [...] remembering strangely that wherever I go, you are with me, and so is he, and that as long as you both live the world will be beautiful to me.

I also really appreciated the way that Rooney approaches climate change and other political/environmental issues, as well as religion. These are always a central topic because of Simon, and so the discussion around them never felt forced or didactic. Instead, because the characters themselves were constantly thinking about these topics, I felt like I was listening in on a friendly conversation or an internal dialogue--a very engaging way to look at topics that become more and more important as time goes on (in a personal as well as a societal sense). As a person who is not very optimistic about the future of human civilization, Chapter 30 hit home. I loved how Sally Rooney talked about having children in a world of uncertainty:

... I mean children are coming anyway, and in the grand scheme of things it won't matter much whether any of them are mine or his. We have to try either way to build a world they can live in.

Eileen says that having an abortion not because she doesn't want the child, but because she is afraid of climate change, would be "a way of mutilating my real life as a gesture of submission to an imagined future." I think these kinds of discussions are critically important for us (Gen Z, millennials, etc.) to begin to form a functional path to move forward in a world that is fundamentally falling apart.

Of course, as in all of Rooney's work, there are all the little phrases that are unexpected and beautiful:

All of life knotted into this house for the night, like a necklace knotted at the bottom of a drawer.

One of my favorite emails in the whole novel was from Alice to Eileen, in which they are discussing the relationship between love, fulfilment, and the inspiration to write or to create:

In a way, it [writing] was like a love affair, or an infatuation, except that it only involved myself and it was all within my own control. [...] It was like God put his hand to my head and filled me with the most intense desire I have ever felt, not the desire for another person, but desire to bring something into being that had never existed before.

Rooney--thank you for another beautiful, beautiful book. So many things to reflect on, so many stunning quotes and thoughts. And, as always, what an incredible meditation on messy female friendship and the complicated role of trauma in relationships.

"And I think if I believed in God, I wouldn't want to prostrate myself before him and ask for forgiveness. I would just want to thank him every day, for everything."

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clairew97's review against another edition

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Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

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ellaford's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is my favourite release from Sally Rooney yet. The way this is written gives so much yet leaves so much for interpretation, and her magic with describing emotional complexities we all feel is just amazing. This book is funny, dark, sexy, reflective and a great commentary on the state of the world.

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anniezelez's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

itsreirei's review against another edition

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2.5

This book is the end result if one decides to write down the imaginary conversations in ones head. (Which I presume is what happened here)

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liv_tir's review against another edition

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A lot of explicit scenes, and topics that I didn't care about

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marpaige's review against another edition

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emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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yilliun's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I have read this book twice now. Rooney masterfully executes books about being in your mid to late twenties and trying to figure out how to live life. I enjoyed her use of foiling each of the main characters against each other and how she uses this to build tension throughout the story. I felt like I knew the characters like friends by the end.

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dorin_d's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

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