Sally Rooney

Download the first chapter of a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Beautiful World, Where Are You Chapter Sampler

Beautiful World, Where Are You is a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

A Novel

Beautiful World, Where Are You

elly

I also feel certain it's better to be deeply love than widely liked.

clara

Dry upturned sycamore leaves scuttling like claws along the South Circular Road. The artificial buttered taste of popcorn in the cinema. Pale-yellow sky in the evening, Thomas Street draped in mist.

And we hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good that the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, and love no one.

And in that way even the bad days were good, because I felt them and remembered feeling them. There was something delicate about living like that - like I was an instrument and the world touched me and reverberated inside me.

Srijita Sarkar 

If God wanted me to give you up, he wouldn't have made me who I am.

It makes me wonder whether celebrity culture has sort of metastasised to fill the emptiness left by religion. Like a malignant growth where the sacred used to be.

Do you know what you look like? One of those girl statues we saw in Rome.

I tell myself that I want to live a happy life, and that the circumstances for happiness just haven’t arisen. But what if that’s not true? What if I’m the one who can’t let myself be happy? Because I’m scared, or I prefer to wallow in self-pity, or I don’t believe I deserve good things, or some other reason. Whenever something good happens to me I always find myself thinking: I wonder how long it will be until this turns out badly. And I almost want the worst to happen sooner, sooner rather than later, and if possible straight away, so at least I don’t have to feel anxious about it anymore.

If I tried I’m sure I would fail and that’s why I’ve never tried.

I have put between myself and my parents such a gulf of sophistication that it’s impossible for them to touch me now or to reach me at all. And I look back across that gulf, not with a sense of guilt or loss, but with relief and satisfaction. Am I better than they are? Certainly not, although maybe luckier. But I am different, and I don’t understand them very well, and I can’t live with them or draw them into my inner world – or for that matter write about them. All my filial duties are nothing but a series of rituals on my part designed to shield myself from criticism while giving nothing of myself away.

One doesn’t think of you as a corporeal being really, but as a beam of pure intellect. And how I wish I had a little more of your radiance illuminating my life at the moment.

If he’s nice to you I will approve of him unconditionally, and if he’s not then I’ll be his enemy forever.

Or is it just that the pain I feel right now is so intense that it transcends my ability to reconstruct the pain I felt at the time? Presumably, remembered suffering never feels as bad as present suffering, even if it was really a lot worse – we can’t remember how much worse it was, because remembering is weaker than experiencing

it feels like looking down and seeing for the first time that I’m standing on a minuscule ledge at a dizzying vertical height, and the only thing supporting my weight is the misery and degradation of almost everyone else on earth

He carried her boxes of books from the back of his car and said proudly: The weight of your brain.

I’ve been thinking lately about right-wing politics (haven’t we all), and how it is that conservatism (the social force) came to be associated with rapacious market capitalism. The connection is not obvious, at least to me, since markets preserve nothing, but ingest all aspects of an existing social landscape and excrete them, shorn of meaning and memory, as transactions. What could be ‘conservative’ about such a process? But it also strikes me that the idea of ‘conservatism’ is in itself false, because nothing can be conserved, as such – time moves in one direction only, I mean. This idea is so basic that when I first thought of it, I felt very brilliant, and then I wondered if I was an idiot. But does it make some sense to you? We can’t conserve anything, and especially not social relations, without altering their nature, arresting some part of their interaction with time in an unnatural way. Just look at what conservatives make of the environment: their idea of conservation is to extract, pillage and destroy, ‘because that’s what we’ve always done’ – but because of that very fact, it’s no longer the same earth we do it to. I suppose you think this is all extremely rudimentary and maybe even that I’m un-dialectical. But these are just the abstract thoughts I had, which I needed to write down, and of which you find yourself the (willing or unwilling) recipient

You should know that our correspondence is my way of holding on to life, taking notes on it, and thereby preserving something of my – otherwise almost worthless, or even entirely worthless – existence on this rapidly degenerating planet …

Syrina Akbari

One of the problems is that Dublin is, and I mean literally and figuratively, flat

Celina Irena Kuhn

If god wanted me to give you Up, He wouldn't have made me who I am.

Elise Rosa Cornelis

These hands touching you now, I use them to pack boxes?

Because in my deepest essence I am just an artefact of our culture.

We hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good

Her beauty is something I have to search for, requiring some interpretive work, some intellectual or abstract work.

Like I was an instrument and the whole world touched me and reverberated inside me

A bit disappointed here. Maybe I heard far too much about this author… Apart from the email exchanges between Alice and Eileen, I couldn’t find interest in their relations with Felix and Simon. I find especially Eileen/Simon underdeveloped as characters, as individuals firstly, and as for their relation: I was 100% not into it.

The sex scenes are not very well written but very efficient to have me permanent rolling eyes, can’t explain why.

To me, the book is unbalanced : Alice and Felix are more interesting in their own ways, so that creates an impression of draft rather than a finished « product » (sorry: book). Not sure I will open « Normal people » now…

Barbara

A bit disappointed here. Maybe I heard far too much about this author… Apart from the email exchanges between Alice and Eileen, I couldn’t find interest in their relations with Felix and Simon. I find especially Eileen/Simon underdeveloped as characters, as individuals firstly, and as for their relation: I was 100% not into it.

The sex scenes are not very well written but very efficient to have me permanent rolling eyes, can’t explain why.

To me, the book is unbalanced : Alice and Felix are more interesting in their own ways, so that creates an impression of draft rather than a finished « product » (sorry: book). Not sure I will open « Normal people » now…

The new novel from the author of Normal People.

Udit

i finally finally finished this book! woohoo three cheers for udit!! i was going to talk ab it on my twitter but instead i thought why not put all of my raw emotions here

first of all idk why it took me 3+ months to read this?? maybe it was the depression coupled with procrastination and the lowkey irritating typeset of this publisher (fuck faber and faber fix your shit please) 

secondly im glad i actually finished it. i love how sally just writes her characters. they don't seem fictional at all its like i was able to feel why simon did that thing and why alice said what she said. it's all so real. surreal if you may.

this might have been my longest book yet

continuing: i got into this book without knowing what its going to be. the thing about me is i just see the top ten reviews on this app and add stuff to my tbr and buy when it goes on a sale or wtv. im very impulsive i guess. the thing i loved most ab this book is the way eileen and alice communicate with each other through emails. it feels so personal and only their thing like it shows how close and exclusive they are to each other and this what i aspire to have tbh.

i read a review on instagram which said felix is the most useless character and boi do i beg to differ. he's actually perfect for alice. the way he knows about how she wanted someone to not hold her high bc of her being a popular author while simultaneously craving praise from him is just real imo. plus why would i, a closeted bisexual man, wouldn't love such nicely written (not so closeted) bisexual character lol. the way he came out to her while being somewhat defensive about it is so relatable. plus the idea of him and simon being together is just so funny. sally i complete trust you to write a mlm novel, i would read the shit out of it

lastly perfect book with perfect ending is all i want to say. there were moments where i thought eileen and simon wont end up together but the last three chapters cleared those doubts. eileen and simon's relationship is so raw my god i want that for myself (not its sad pining part ofcourse) anywho id definitely recommend this to my friends.

Maria

well, this is hard to rate. i liked the last part of this book a lot more than the rest, i also enjoyed alice and eileen’s email exchanges. that being said, i don’t know how i feel about the characters. i felt like the two male characters were very underdeveloped. as for alice and eileen, they often felt like a device for debating various social constructs, and while i enjoyed some of these discussions, it felt more like i was reading an essay and not like i was delving into a character’s psyche. alice as a character is exactly why i have a very love/hate relationship with characters who are writers . i assume she served as a voice for rooney herself to describe her own feelings on authorship and sometimes the hypocrisy that comes with such success, but i don’t know.. it felt a bit too on the nose at times. 
when it comes to the relationships, alice and felix left me perplexed. i can’t tell you what exactly it was about him that made alice feel the way she felt about him, which probably goes back to the fact that he was an underdeveloped character. 
it’s an easy read, with a style that is very easily transcribed to screen i think. it felt a lot like i was watching a tv show at times. 
i did love the musings on our role in this world and the hypocrisy that comes with wanting to do some greater good but how we often just serve and care for ourselves. and i will say i did enjoy this more than normal people, but i think overall i have a very neutral opinion on sally rooney and her work.

well, this is hard to rate. i liked the last part of this book a lot more than the rest, i also enjoyed alice and eileen’s email exchanges. that being said, i don’t know how i feel about the characters. i felt like the two male characters were very underdeveloped. as for alice and eileen, they often felt like a device for debating various social constructs, and while i enjoyed some of these discussions, it felt more like i was reading an essay and not like i was delving into a character’s psyche. alice as a character is exactly why i have a very love/hate relationship with characters who are writers. i assume she served as a voice for rooney herself to describe her own feelings on authorship and sometimes the hypocrisy that comes with such success, but i don’t know.. it felt a bit too on the nose at times. 
when it comes to the relationships, alice and felix left me perplexed. i can’t tell you what exactly it was about him that made alice feel the way she felt about him, which probably goes back to the fact that he was an underdeveloped character. 
it’s an easy read, with a style that is very easily transcribed to screen i think. it felt a lot like i was watching a tv show at times. 
i did love the musings on our role in this world and the hypocrisy that comes with wanting to do some greater good but how we often just serve and care for ourselves. and i will say i did enjoy this more than normal people, but i think overall i have a very neutral opinion on sally rooney and her work.

Rooney has a way of creating characters you want to punch in the face or shake by the shoulders, who say the dumbest shit, who cannot get out of their own way…but such compelling plot lines you can’t help but read through. I liked this better than conversations with friends but Normal People is still the best.

Jess Rez

Michaela Hudson

My main takeaway? Showing raccoon videos is ALWAYS an acceptable excuse to knock on people's door at midnight

iqro, aina

mirin

“all that really means is that i love my life, and im excited to have it back again, excited to feel that it’s going to continue, that new things will keep happening, that nothing is over yet” 

i didn’t LOVE most of this book - i despised the characters and they talk much for my liking but the lessons and messages conveyed were to sally rooney’s standard of giving me an existential crisis so i enjoyed it

Jonathan Garcia

I really struggled to finish this book because I found it was quite boring, nothing exciting happened. But also that’s what made me really enjoy the book, the mundane feeling of normal people going on about their lives.

Allison Dempsey

This was written like a David Attenborough script for a nature documentary and felt like a giant “screw you” to everyone who liked Conversations with Friends and Normal People. The characters were insufferably pretentious and not particularly likable but I suppose I’d still watch the Hulu version if they make it a show.

Julie Rubens

I definitely liked this book, but I honestly just wasn't very invested in it. I liked the characters, but I didn't love them and the plot was a bit boring at times. 
I did enjoy reading this book though, because it's such an easy read and it was entertaining. I would recommend you to read it if you want to get out of a reading slump or don't know what to read next.

Kendall McClain

Ryan 

i'm surprised how much of a delight this book is. i feel like everyone needs to know before but this is a smut romance disguised as literary fiction. rooney's writing truly evolved from her past two books and i liked how self-aware this book is (on rooney herself) and never expected to relate the most out of her books.

Jackie Lu

** spoiler alert **
           I think I just like the way Sally Rooney describes and somewhat romanticises everyday mundane tasks. I found the political talk in this novel somewhat boring, I’m sure other people would find it interesting but for me, I wasn’t particularly interested so I skimmed and sometimes skipped through the email correspondences between Eileen and Alice. Damn the characters in this novel were a shit show- I think Simon was the only character I could properly tolerate. Felix was so unbearable! This mans has got the biggest inferiority complex I’ve ever read about and Alice can honestly do better. I don’t think I really liked this book as much but I don’t want to admit how much I really didn’t like it. Sometimes it was nice and interesting to read but it was more boring and confusing most of the time. I would not actively recommend this book to anyone to read because it was just so lacking and there were very few moments where I could connect. I hate Felix’s character so much i’m hoping to find some reviews on his shitty behaviour after I post this review.

i know it isn’t a surprise anymore how brilliant of a writer sally rooney is but can i ask again? how is she this excellent? god, i just want to shatter and let her fix me back to life.

azliana aziz

her best one perhaps. the air of detached-ness + impersonal tone made this far more compelling and sophisticated. i do feel her ideas and thematic intent gel quite well in this one because i get the sense that she's able to put some distance between her authorial voice vs narrative. pretty cool comeback all in all.

anumitaa

the details of this book are exquisite the level of precision 😭😭 very profound and calm and immersive and the title fits so perfectly I love this book 😋 also my fav character is Felix ! If anyone wants to buy this book for me you’re welcome to ☺️☺️ I want the hard copy so I can actually tag and highlight it instead of just on Libby 😁

Ally

no like yeah

some parts are just chefs kiss, love it and other times I was like let’s move on

Sophie Wang

4.75 stars only because i didn't always love the email format as the primary form of storytelling of the mcs' internal monologue, but this was my favorite sally rooney novel yet.

even though normal people's love story was more digestible, i found the subject matters explored in beautiful world + the themes of self-imposed isolation much more compelling with this set of characters. 

i also think it's a mistake to go into any sally rooney novel with a critical eye to try to love or judge any one particular character or weigh their net goodness. all of the cast are demonstratively flawed people, but i really enjoyed watching them explore what is and isn't forgiveable in their relationships with each other.

also, i liked the ending – it concluded in the only way i thought a book like this could. yes it is a cliché message, but the storytelling was so convincing it got me to truly want and believe that for the characters. 

scenes i especially liked: the confrontation between felix and alice when she first told him she loved him was palpable, and there was a flashback during eileen's sister's wedding of an underage eileen clumsily trying to profess her feelings to simon that felt very cinematic.

syadrina

i've never highlighted so many parts of an e-book before

camille peiffer

definitely closer to 2.5 stars

i did like this quote- “Is this how it's going to be for the rest of our lives? Time dissolving into thick dark fog, things that happened last week seeming years ago, and things that happened last year feeling like yesterday.”

Beautiful World, Where Are You Chapter Sampler

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