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

Pictured edition: Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney, Faber & Faber 2021. ISBN 9780571365425. Cover art by ? Image used on this blog under the “Fair dealing for criticism or review” provision of the Commonwealth Copyright Act, 1968. Surrounding design made by me using Canva.

This is the first book by Sally Rooney that I’ve read, and I have to say that I absolutely loved it. It explores the lives of some late twenties/early thirties people, living in Ireland and trying to come to grips with adulthood, life, art and relationships. The two main characters are Alice, a phenomenally successful rich young novelist who’s recently had a mental breakdown, and her best friend from college, Eileen, a beautiful and intelligent woman who won lots of prizes at university, but now feels a bit directionless, earning a pittance as an editor for a small literary magazine and flat-sharing in expensive Dublin. Alice, living in the country to recover from her breakdown, meets Felix, a local slightly dodgy seeming person, on Tinder and strikes up a sort of relationship with him. Eileen has a complicated relationship with the very handsome and good Simon, with whom she’s been friendly since she was fifteen.

Plot-wise, not a lot happens, and, not having read Rooney before, I was surprised at the numerous explicit yet offhand sex scenes – not a typical feature of this genre. Despite (or because of?) the minimal plot, I became so invested in the characters and truly interested in their inner lives, which was sometimes quite frustrating. (Get out of the way of your own happiness, people!) Rooney’s writing is so beautiful, so spare and economical, yet evocative, that at times, such as with the descriptions and memories in the wedding scene, I was lost in admiration for it. I also loved Alice and Eileen’s discursive emails about the fate of the world in general, and Linear B and the collapse of Bronze Age civilisation, and single use plastics, and art, and, and, and…

I listened to this on audiobook, which had some benefits, like being able to listen to Aoife McMahon’s lovely Irish accent. I did initially find her ‘Simon’ voice a little annoying, but I got used to it. There are a few minor drawbacks to listening to the audiobook version; for example, I didn’t know that the epigraph was an epigraph until it had finished. And when I looked at the free sample of the ebook online, I realised that Rooney, like another Irish writer Roddy Doyle, doesn’t use speech marks for dialogue, which gives it quite a different stylistic feel and which you can’t, obviously, tell from the audio. But, as they say, ‘Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.’ If I weren’t able to listen to audiobooks while commuting or cleaning, I wouldn’t be able to experience so much good writing – and I can always go back to the print version later.

Highly recommend. I’m now very interested in reading more of Rooney’s work.

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Title: Beautiful World, Where Are You

Author: Sally Rooney

Cover: ? Looking for this information… (harder to find on audiobook versions than on print books)

First published: Faber & Faber, 2021

Audio: narrated by Aoife McMahon, Faber & Faber

Length: 288 pages (book), 10 hours & 4 minutes (audio)

ISBN: 9781250818041

Awards: not yet…

Genre: literary fiction

Representation: minor references to LGBTQIA+ (main characters)

Suitability: senior fiction

Fyi: sex scenes, discussion of suicidal thoughts, discussion of depression and mental breakdowns, some swearing

Themes: love, friendship, family, class, money, fame, art, the state of the world, coming of age

Literary features/tropes: mixture of third person subjective perspective and first person epistolary (email) narration, slightly non-linear (memories), bare but evocative description

NSW syllabus: potential related text for Common Module: Texts & Human Experiences (12 English Advanced); potential related text for the Literary Mindscapes elective (12 English Extension 1); wide reading

If you like this, try: other Sally Rooney books, e.g. Conversations with Friends or Normal People. Other shortish works of literary fiction, e.g. Piranesi by Susannah Clarke. Other (reasonably) contemporary Irish literary fiction, e.g. The Commitments by Roddy Doyle. An older classic novel also about money, class, art, love, friendship and family, e.g. Howards End by E.M. Forster.