Beautiful World, Where Are You
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Reviewed by Jess
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Welcome to Sally Rooney in 2021: more political, more existential, more horny. BWWAY is what you’ve come to expect from Rooney; a story where it seems like there’s no real plot, just some threads eventually binding and then fraying, and we’re just watching it happen.
Eileen and Alice are best friends from uni, navigating adulthood through the weird times we’re in (pre-pandemic, post-Trump), dealing with love, mental health, family, and the meaning of life. The latter quite literally, through a series of emails they send to each other where I learnt more about history than I have in any recent novel. If the Bronze Age Collapse interests you, their emails will be truly riveting. I for one felt a bit lost in their friendship. Their real feelings and emotional life seem secondary to these philosophical sprawls - who talks like this with their friends? It’s only when they meet in person towards the end that I felt it was real.
I truly loved Eileen as a character, definitely suffers from younger sibling defeatism, but is sweet and just wants to be happy. The will-they-won’t-they with Simon, her main love interest since childhood, is superbly written (although not sure about the Daddy complex!) and I found myself rooting for them. I also think Alice is a projection of Rooney herself. Even if their lives aren’t parallel IRL, she seems too aloof and separated compared to Eileen, which makes me think she’s writing about herself! Felix, the 4th character, is the quintessential fuck boy who needs help, just written by an intellectual using long prose. All these relationships are fuelled along with A LOT of sex. Be ready for long paragraphs about flushed necks and low moaning.
All of this is to say I enjoyed being along for the ride! This is a summer romance novel written for people who consider themselves well-educated & above the blockbuster novel. Rooney’s comments on politics & feminism are really interesting to read, religion more complicated & philosophy, much more rambling! But Eileen & Simon kept me going through this novel. But you’re all going to read it anyway so just go with it!
