A review by occasionalreader25
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

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

2.75

As a big Sally Rooney fan, I was quite disappointed after finishing her most recent novel. Eventhough the writing was, as expected, brilliant, I found myself missing the personal thoughts of the protagonists. You could later read them in their Emails to one another, but still it was not the same as in her previous two novels where you truly had the feeling of looking inside the character‘s head which is one of my favorite things about Rooney‘s writing style. I also found the characters and especially the relationship between Felix and Alice flat. Felix was, I think, such a problematic und unlikeable character, which was probably intended, but I still found it quite hard to watch him treating Alice like he did. He made me truly agressive. One thing I found very interesting was how Rooney wrote the sex scenes in this novel. I feel like she really set a focus on the conversation during it. The telephone sex scene was actually one of my favourites, she did such an amazing job with that.
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