A review by usedtotheweather
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

dark funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book is intensely presentist realism; also a conservative manifesto--that is, seeking some means of conservation of life, of tradition's structuring possibilities, a rejection of the nebulousness of contemporary social life.

The last two chapters seemed tacked on--the first from Alice's pov about

covid-19 lockdowns

felt of a piece with the rest of the work, the second a letter from Eileen which really read as an idyll of a future happiness merely imagined by the author, not actually a kind of happiness grounded in the identity/social reality Rooney has been dwelling in for the duration of the book.