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

emotional reflective medium-paced

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Read in Braille

Pub. 2021, 368pp

Faber

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This novel is set mainly in Ireland, both in a small town and in Dublin, where best friends Alice and Eileen studied and lived together.

This is a book in which you could say nothing much really happens, and that’s my kind of book! It concerns questions of identity, sexuality and wider issues including politics, global warming and religion.

I love Sally Rooney’s writing and this book is just as good as the previous two. There’s a gorgeous rhythm to her prose and I find that when you get started you just want to read and read! And her dialogue, to me, continues to be her biggest strength.

I liked the mix of ways characters interact with each other; in person, through text messages and over email. It makes for a varied structure. There are some very amusing texts between Eileen and her sister Lola who’s preparing for her wedding whereas the emails between Eileen and Alice have a different tone, becoming very philosophical at times while mixing in anecdotes about their lives: “The state of the world being what it is, humanity on the cusp of extinction, here I am writing another email about sex and friendship…what else is there to live for?”

Of all the relationships, I enjoyed reading about Eileen and Simon most as I felt it accurately captured what it’s like to be in a high pressure situation, with the real fear that, if you go for it, it could go horribly wrong and the thought of the potential fallout is unbearable.

I’m glad I left it a couple of years before reading this book as I’d forgotten about the TV series of Normal People and all the hype surrounding this book’s launch. It meant I just enjoyed reading it as it was without the background buzz of the usual ‘Sally Rooney discourse’ on publication.

Rooney has a gift for eloquently expressing the awkwardness of human interactions and I didn’t want it to end.