Beautiful World, Where Are You

In all honesty I think this book was overrated. To me it just felt like an awful lot of dialogue and not much plot.

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Claire Pinks

1 month ago

5

This was my first Sally Rooney book and I’m just not sure I like her style to be honest. I loved normal people, the TV adaptation but keep putting the book off. After reading this, I’m not sure I’ll bother trying!

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Claire Louise

1 month ago

5

Conversations with Friends is one of my favourite reads and after Normal People, I was really excited to read Sally Rooney's latest novel. Sadly, it didn't live up to expectations and I felt a bit let down.

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A stunning exploration of friendship, hope, love and sex as group of young people navigate intense social issues such as climate change and capitalism, attempting to find beauty in the small mundane elements of life.

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Los Angeles Review of Books

7 months ago

8

A Tender Irish Elegy: Sally Rooney’s “Beautiful World, Where Are You” If Beautiful World, Where Are You feels out of time, that’s because it’s an elegy for the era in which it occurs. If it isn’t a perfect novel, it is a tender one. Its retrospective gaze kindles its potential futurity. And believing in the future is, after all, an act of faith. About the author: Brenna M. Casey is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. Her writing and reviews have appeared in Public Books, Ploughshares, The Assembly, and elsewhere.

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Publishers Weekly

7 months ago

8

Rooney (Normal People) continues her exploration of class, sex, and mental health with a cool, captivating story about a successful Irish writer, her friend, and their lovers. Alice Kelleher, 29, has suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of her work’s popularity. After moving from Dublin to a small seaside town, she meets Felix, a local with a similar background—they both grew up working-class, and both have absent fathers—who works in a shipping warehouse. She invites him to accompany her to Rome, where he falls in love with her but resents what he takes to be her superior attitude. Meanwhile, in Dublin, Alice’s university friend Eileen Lydon works a low-paying literary job and explores her attraction to a childhood friend who seems to return her feelings but continues seeing other women. Alice and Eileen update each other in long emails, which Rooney cleverly exploits for essayistic musings about culture, climate change, and political upheaval. Rooney establishes a distance from her characters’ inner lives, creating a sense of privacy even as she describes Alice and Eileen’s most intimate moments. It’s a bold change to her style, and it makes the illuminations all the more powerful when they pop. As always, Rooney challenges and inspires. Agent: Tracy Bohan, the Wylie Agency.

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Amazon Best Sellers

7 months ago

8

“[Rooney’s] writing about sex is taut and direct. It’s a narrative style I associate with the films of Andrew Haigh and Joanna Hogg, two great visual poets of social anxiety and reticence. Rooney’s dialogue is frequently perfect . . . Beautiful World, Where Are You is Rooney’s best novel yet. Funny and smart, full of sex and love and people doing their best to connect.” ―Brandon Taylor, The New York Times Book Review

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New York Times Best Sellers

7 months ago

8

A novelist, a warehouse worker, an editorial assistant and a political adviser deal with changes.

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