Felix, after learning of Simon’s faith and religiosity, asks Alice, “He’s weird in the head or something is he?” Lola, Eileen’s difficult older sister, insists he must be a freak. Simon, a practicing Catholic, now works as a policy advisor for a left-wing parliamentary group.Ĭatholicism, while present in her first two novels, moves from the fringes to the center of this text. Eileen lies in bed at night thinking about Simon, the boy with seizures who grew up next door, five years her senior. Back in Dublin, Alice’s best (and, well, really only) friend from college, Eileen, adds periods to the name “WH Auden,” standardizing its appearance in the little-read literary magazine she edits. She invites him to join her on a press trip to Rome. There she matches with Felix, a local warehouse worker, on Tinder.
They are smart and self-aware, cynical and searching.Īlice, a best-selling novelist contending with early-onset celebrity, retreats to a coastal town in the west of Ireland after a nervous breakdown.
They write slam poetry, short stories, literary reviews and popular novels. Rooney’s characters are young Irish intellectuals. These exchanges are filled with the sharp social commentary to which we have grown accustomed in Rooney’s writing. In chapters with alternating formats, we watch in splendid detail from a third-person perspective before Rooney switches to giving us Alice and Eileen’s emails in epistolary form. Around 30 years old, these four are slightly older than Frances and Bobbi from Rooney’s Conversations With Friends or Connell and Marianne from her Normal People. It is hard to resist visualizing their names emblazoned in white Helvetica stacked vertically on a plain black T-shirt. For at least a bit, their restless relationship is filled with grace.īeautiful World, Where Are You revolves around four characters: Alice, Felix, Simon and Eileen. These alienated, anxious characters find a moment of peace together in the pews. Mass at the “Church of Mary Immaculate, Refuge of Sinners” after spending the night together. Two of the characters find themselves attending the 9:00 a.m. This time, I can pinpoint that moment to exactly-the point when I put my book down to text my friend. There comes a point in each of her novels, usually about 100 pages in, where I find myself falling in love. It’s similar to her other ones,” I responded, “good in a familiar way.” “How’s the book?” a dear friend texted me, knowing I had an advance reader’s copy of Rooney’s new novel Beautiful World, Where Are You. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
0 kommentar(er)
