Beautiful World, Where Are You

3.5
I enjoyed Sally Rooney's writing in this novel a lot more than in her other books but the story and the characters were not for me. I found them unlikeable most of the time and all the things they talked about and how they talked about them really didn't do it for me. There were some parts that I really loved, so it's quite unfortunate..

Four thirty-something people and their relationships are the focus of this novel. The plot is told like stage directions—this person wakes up, gets dressed, walks into the kitchen, tells the other person goodbye—from a slightly removed point-of-view, and these scenes are alternated with emails that two of the characters frequently send back and forth to each other.

I'm always being told that I don't know what life is like for young adults today, and, after reading this book, I feel like I now have a better idea of what it's like. The relationships push forward and then suddenly one or the other people in the relationship stops or even steps back. People are deeply reluctant to express themselves or commit or meet in person or even answer the phone. Some people can't make enough money to make it through the month and others never think about money. It's a picture of modern young adults that feels very true.

I like Sally Rooney writing style and how it makes the story flow.
This book follows the story of two friends and their love interests and it is written in 3 different POV. I specially enjoyed how the POV changed making the story move forward.
Although the characters were somewhat unlikable I was really invested on their outcomes which is what I consider the most important in storytelling.

Мне нравится, что книги Салли Руни - не для всех. И в этих моих словах нет ни грамма упрека или самодовольства, просто кто-то понимает все то о чем говорится в этих историях - проживал то же самое, чувствовал это, а кто-то нет.
Я совершенно точно из тех, кто узнает себя не в героях, а в чувствах, и кто читает эти тексты и погружается в прошлое.
* Сначала книга казалось мне скучноватой - первые две явно были более динамичными (но, возможно, дело в том, что я опять сделала то, что делать нельзя - почитала отзывы и критику). Мне виделся перебор с описаниями - казалось, описания эти не детали атмосферы, что было бы оправдано, а, скорее, какими-то сценарными выдержками - словно, вот сейчас готовится сцена, а действие будет сильно после.Но я не могла не видеть, что в героях все же сквозят, проскальзывают “фирменные” черты героев Салли Руни - прямота, честность, отстраненность, почти медитативное спокойствие. Я все думала, что мне это напоминает, а оказалось, что другого моего любимого автора с героями похожих характеристик - Харуки Мураками.*
Помимо прекрасных и эмоционально знакомых героев, книга переполнена разговорами - о человеческих отношениях, о современной литературе, о вере, о ценности собственной жизни даже в сравнении с судьбами мира. Если постараться не замечать странные рассуждения про коммунизм и жесткий анал, то эти разговоры - прекрасные блюда высокой кухни на столе в студенческом общежитии.

Однако, не могу не отметить и то, что, по-моему, делает роман несколько пластиковым: в некоторых моментах так и просится развитие сюжета, но его не происходит - эти моменты остаются пустыми, а пустоты сверху прикрываются кружевными салфетками, которые наивно не скрывают ничего. Если в сцену просится что-то значимое, то его отсутствие не скрыть за “он поставил тарелку, а она прикусила губу”. А автор решил, что и так сойдет.

Иногда простые описания односложных действий создают впечатление и задают атмосферу: ты будто оказываешь вместе с героями, прямо внутри сюжета. Салли Руни “усаживает” читателя в зрительный зал, а действо разворачивается на сцене. Это великолепная задумка и исполнение, но есть небольшой просчет: художественное внимание к мелочам замечательно играет в набоковских текстах, хорошо воспринимается в зарисовках Харуки Мураками, но теряет большую долю своей привлекательности в такой вот “сценической” форме: зритель просто не в состоянии уловить всю эту лавину действий и звуков - налил чай, звякнул ключами, посмотрел на экран телефона... Его внимание рассеивается, мозг устает и появляется ощущение искусственности.
***
Но все же, это - Салли Руни, она сама собственной персоной в своем очередном романе. И уже это может быть руководством идти и читать.

I wanted Sally Rooney to evolve her style and her stories, but this was not it. Her characters are usually pretty annoying in a fun way, but I never wished to read their chapter-long email converstations full with hipster anxieties about the world. I also didn't need Rooney to insert herself in the novel to tell us how much she hated the whole attention her success has brought her. In between those two things there was a rather typical story about insecure young adults talking about their insecurities while having a lof of sex.

i liked this! the pacing felt a little off at points, particularly the build up to the end felt rushed & abrupt but other than that i enjoy the writing style. also more than other books i've read, the characters felt like real people with lives that happened before & lives that will continue after the moment in time that's captured in the book

Got to 70% and bailed. Didn't grab me. The form confused me with the emails. Might be because I'm in a sad place at the moment so don't take my word for it.

perhaps it was the repetitive nature of the themes on purpose and love and friendship and sex. Perhaps I see a lot of Alice in myself at the moment minus the success part. Perhaps engaging with a relationship where both parties are seeing and thinking different things but still engaging with it is confusing for my brain right now.

I feel like in my life i'm slowly making the journey from my head to my heart, and with that from a more binary view to the world to one with much more grey - I feel like Beautiful World, Where Are You really hits on the greyness, the dullness, ordinaryness of the world...maybe I wasn't ready to swallow that pill?

Just finished “Beautiful World, Where Are You” by Sally Rooney, and honestly, it's a bit of a mixed bag.

First off, it took me a while to get into it. The first 50 pages were a bit of a slog, but once I connected with the characters, things picked up. Rooney's got a knack for creating interesting people – I found myself really invested in their stories and struggles.

Now, let's talk about the elephant in the room: the social and political commentary. Look, I get what Rooney's trying to do, showing how these characters think about the world and all. But man, it felt so disconnected from the actual story. Every time it popped up, it yanked me right out of the plot. Not a fan of how that was handled.

Character-wise, Eileen and Simon's relationship had me hooked. Alice and Felix? Not so much. Felt like their romance needed more deapth.

The book's structure was pretty cool – switching between regular chapters and emails. Never seen that before, but it worked for me.

Gotta say, some of the themes hit close to home. The loneliness, the feeling that no one likes you, wondering if you could do better in life – yeah, I felt that. Made the characters super relatable.

In the end, I'd give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. The characters and relatable themes pulled it up, but the distracting social commentary knocked it down a peg.

Would I read more Rooney? Maybe. I've got “Normal People” sitting on my shelf, so I'll probably give that a go. But if it's packed with the same kind of disjointed social commentary, I might have to call it quits on Rooney after that.

Bottom line: It's a decent read if you're into character-driven stories and don't mind some philosophical musings thrown in. Just be prepared for some random societal deep dives that might throw you off your reading groove.

Una novela de costumbrismo, lenta pero profunda. Te hace cuestionarte muchos aspectos y creencias a la vez que se lo cuestionan las dos protagonistas. Eso me encanta.

En general me ha gustado mucho, las reflexiones de los correos entre Alice y Eileen han sido probablemente mi parte favorita. Es cierto que no he conseguido conectar completamente con lo personajes y eso ha hecho que pasando la mitad del libro me haya costado más seguirlo. Creo que es la forma en la que escribe Sally lo que hace que me cueste implicarme con los personajes, escribe de una forma que se me hace un poco impersonal.

3.5 rounded down to a 3.

The writing style is quite clunky, but you get used to it. One of the characters is a millionaire writer, and at times she talks about what it's like to be famous, which felt a bit too much like the author complaining via the character.

I finished it and felt left with a sense of “well what was the point in that?” hence the low rating.

So, toward the end, with less than 40 pages to go, I got stuck in one chapter for about a week and a half. Because every time I tried to read this chapter, I would fall asleep. Part of it was being tired. But part of it was sheer boredom.

This was my least favorite. I didn't buy any of the relationships. Simon is blandly nice and good. Supposedly. I thought he was milquetoast and stupid.

Sadly, the author is definitely a one-trick pony. She is obviously intelligent. But I don't understand the ruminations on religion. Maybe that's because I come from a religious background (though Protestant), and I find the things Alice and Eileen think about religion to be naive, if not completely incorrect. And I don't understand why Alice and Felix are together, because they have zero chemistry; he's also a butthead. That being said, he's also the first character whom I feel like isn't merely performing his bisexuality. I believe, a little, that he is bi; I've never believed it of the other characters in her novels. I still don't believe any of them are Marxist; they all just say they are.

The quarter-life crises of the characters doesn't feel quite fleshed-out enough. I remember my friends all having quarter-life crises. There were similar worries, but less pretention.

I'm also very over heteronormativity of the characters, even the ones who aren't heteronormative. I don't know anyone personally at this point who performs gender so normatively as Eileen, Marianne, or Frances. Once again, a female character wants to be abused by a man. And once again, the characters can't communicate. Like, at all. Ever. Simon can't just come out and tell Eileen how he feels? But he can have sex with her over and over again? He's an idiot.

It's the same story, just with different details. And the style was killing me. I...I just can't. And this is purely subjective. But the lack of quotation marks. The need for more paragraphs. The run-ons. It doesn't feel experimental; it feels lazy.

That being said, I feel like this is maybe the most honest of the three books. Mostly because of the emails between the supposed besties. Who also can't communicate very well in person. I get that; that part makes sense. But the lack of chemistry when they finally meet does not.

Reading this, I know everyone thinks Alice is Rooney's avatar. But so is Eileen.

I'm sorry for the negative reviews, but her novels elude me. I don't relate. I don't see myself or my friends, most of whom are actually smack-dab in the midst of the Millennial generation. Rooney is obviously intelligent, but I'm confused by the naivete of her supposedly worldly characters, the stupidity of her male characters, and how no one can communicate properly. Maybe it's all just too cis/white/thin/privileged/heteronormative for me–because the characters are, despite their proclamations otherwise.

Novel ini mengisahkan tentang empat karakter utama, yaitu Alice, Felix, Eileen, dan Simon, yang berada dalam fase dewasa muda dengan berbagai persoalan eksistensial, cinta, dan persahabatan. Rooney menggunakan gaya narasi yang sama yang dipakainya di Conversation With Friends, tanpa tanda baca.
Dalam novel ini ada tambahan narasi melalaui surat elektronik antara karakter Alice dan Eileen. Alice dan Eileen, dua sahabat dekat, sering membahas ketidakpuasan mereka terhadap dunia dan impian tentang kehidupan yang lebih baik. Tokoh-tokoh ini digambarkan secara realistis, terkadang terkesan ironis, namun tetap menyentuh dengan pergulatan mereka terhadap arti kebahagiaan dan tujuan hidup.
Kuakui awalnya aku skeptis, setelah kecewa dengan Conversation With Friends. Namun ternyata persahabatan antara empat karakter utama disini terasa dalam dan menyentuh, terlebih di klimaksnya. Untuk penggemar literary fiction, aku merekomendasikan novel ini untuk kalian.

2024 update: I loved it. But do people really write emails like an essay? /s

I feel like the characters are becoming side stories and this was really meant to be an essay about 21st century issues. The message is great but it felt like I was just reading them off the actual Wikipedia page, or maybe an online article. If I were interested in reading about these topics like climate change, consumerism, etc., I'd probably just read something scientific and factual news.

Maybe I'm just not in the right headspace going into this book but it's putting me off knowing I'll be going through an economics lecture every few chapters or so.

Alice and Eileen are two young Irish women who have been friends since college, now out making their way in the world. Alice is a novelist who has published two successful novels and has recently recovered from a mental breakdown. She's renting an old rectory in a seaside village 3 hours from Dublin. Eileen works for a literary journal and shares an apartment in Dublin with roommates. Part of this novel is the text of the long emails they exchange about how they're feeling about life, with existential questions like what one should do about the suffering of people living in deep poverty or under oppressive regimes. The rest of the novel follows Alice and Eileen as they navigate their relationships with young men Felix and Simon. Alice meets Felix, a warehouse worker who doesn't read novels, on Tinder. Although their first meeting is inauspicious, they keep meeting and surprisingly, Alice asks Felix to come with her on a work trip to Rome (and equally surprisingly, he agrees). Eileen has known and loved Simon since she was a young girl, but although they are close friends and occasionally have sex, they have never been in an acknowledged Relationship.

There are occasional romantic moments, but these relationships are spiky and uncomfortable. Alice and Eileen are smart and capable young women, but they are both uneasy with their places in the world and with the vulnerability that is necessary for "Relationships" to grow. The epistolary parts of the novel are the easiest to read, I think because Alice and Eileen are comfortable with representing themselves in writing, where they have control over how they come across. Their in person interactions with each other and with Felix and Simon are painful at times, because all their insecurities, resentments, and fears are so close to the surface. So, I admire this book, but it is not a cozy read.