Book #9: Beautiful World, Where are You by Sally Rooney
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I had read that Sally Rooney's third book got some bad reviews, so didn't set my expectations too high, and I was ultimately disappointed.
So, the book involves two couples whose stories are largely separate from each other until about three quarters of the way into the book.
First off, there is Alice, a writer (I think I read that Sally Rooney based Alice on herself), who meets Felix, and invites him to Rome. Alice is said to have spent some time in a psychiatric institution following a nervous breakdown, but this seems almost forgotten about throughout the rest of the novel.
There is also Eileen falling in love with Simon, whom she has known for some time; the only problem is that he seems to see their relationship as being very open, and is also seeing another woman.
Throughout this book, there seemed to be a few good points made about the nature of relationships, but these seemed too few and far between, compared to all the book's faults.
First off, there felt like there was nothing much in this book that wasn't explored in Sally Rooney's first two books, Conversations with Friends, and especially Normal People. I found it far too easy to compare Alice and Eileen to Marianne, and compare Felix and Simon to Connell.
Secondly. the book just feels too long-winded and wordy. As well as Sally Rooney's annoying habit of not bothering to use speech marks when characters start talking, some of the paragraphs go on for several pages, without a single break, making it feel like a chore to read. At times, it felt like a first draft of a novel that nobody had bothered to go through and edit.
The book also contains a lot of chapters that are just Alice and Eileen e-mailing each other, often recapping the events of the previous chapter, and repatedly telling each other that they must meet up soon. As with everything else, the e-mails just get too long-winded at times, and reminded me of a book that I read a few years ago, and was unimpressed at: Chris Kraus' "I Love Dick". Alice and Eileen often ramble a lot in their e-mails, talking about politics, religion, and even plastic and the problems it causes for the environment at times. Some of the other chapters also had sections where the characters were just texting each other.
One other thing that struck me about this book was that the characters didn't seem to develop or change very much. I don't know if that was the idea, but there seemed to be a constant cycle of characters falling out with each other and prompty reconciling.
There were a few other minor things that annoyed me; Eileen and Simon are first introduced in chaper 3, but for some reason for the first few pages are constantly referred to as "the woman" and "the man", after which the book launches into a potted history of all the four main characters.
The whole book made me wish Sally Rooney would try a different genre for her next novel, rather than constantly writing about relationships. I intend to watch the upcoming dramatisation of Conversations with Friends, but if this ever gets adapted for TV, I think I'll give it a miss. I definitely wouldn't bother reading this again.
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