Name: Vojtech's review of Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Item: Beautiful World, Where Are You
Rating: 4
Author: Vojtech

Sally Rooney

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

Silje Løvli Lorentsen

On the platform of a train station, late morning, early June: two women embracing after a separation of several months. Behind them, a tall fair-haired man alighting from the train carrying two suitcases. The women unspeaking, their eyes closed tight, their arms wrapped around one another, for a second, two seconds, three. Were they aware, in the intensity of their embrace, of something slightly ridiculous about this tableau, something almost comical, as someone nearby sneezed violently into a crumpled tissue; as a dirty discarded plastic bottle scuttled along the platform under a breath of wind; as a mechanised billboard on the station wall rotated from an advertisement for hair products to an advertisement for car insurance; as life in its ordinariness and even ugly vulgarity imposed itself everywhere all around them? Or were they in this moment unaware, or something more than unaware - were they somehow invulnerable to, untouched by, vulgarity and ugliness, glancing for a moment into something deeper, something concealed beneath the surface of life, not unreality but a hidden reality: the pres- ence at all times, in all places, of a beautiful world?

I wish there was a good theory of sexuality out there for me to read. All the existing theories seem to be mostly about gender- but what about sex itself? I mean, what even is it? To me it's normal to meet people and think of them in a sexual way without actually having sex with them - or, more to the point, without even imagining having sex with them, without even thinking about imagining it. This suggests that sexuality has some 'other' content, which is not about the act of sex. And maybe even a majority of our sexual experiences are mostly this 'other'. So what is the other?

I mean, we're used to engaging with cultural works set 'in the present'. But this sense of the continuous present is no longer a feature of our lives. The present has become discontinuous. Each day, even each hour of each day, replaces and makes irrelevant the time before, and the events of our lives make sense only in relation a perpetually updating timeline of news content.

I was in the local shop today, getting something to eat for lunch, when I suddenly had the strangest sensation -a spontaneous awareness of the unlikeliness of this life. I mean. I thought of all the rest of the human population - most of whom live in what you and I would consider abject poverty - who have never seen or entered such a shop. And this, this, is what all their work sustains! This lifestyle, for people like us! All the various brands of soft drinks in plastic bottles and all the prepackaged lunch deals and confectionery in sealed bags and store-baked pastries - this is it, the culmination of all the labour in the world, all the burning of fossil fuels and all the. back-breaking work on coffee farms and sugar plantations. All for this! This convenience shop! I felt dizzy thinking about it.

Lindy

If you weren't my friend I wouldn't know who I was, she said.

Any time something really good happens, my life has to fall apart. Maybe it's me, maybe I'm the one doing it. 

What if the meaning of life on earth is not eternal progress toward some unspecified goal - the engineering and production of more and more powerful technologies, the development of more and more complex and abstruse cultural forms? What if these things just rise and recede naturally, like tides, while the meaning of life remains the same always - just to live and be with other people? 

Güzel Dünya, Neredesin

Beliz Kaya

Tanrı senden vazgeçmemi istemiş olsa, beni ben olarak yaratmazdı.

Birbirlerinin yüz ifadelerinden bir şey öğrenemeyecekleri kadar karanlıktı dışarısı ama buna rağmen gözlerini ayırmadan bakmaya devam ettiler, öyle ki sanki bakma eylemi görebildiklerinden daha önemliydi.

Çekilen ıstırabın hatırası, asla yaşanan andaki kadar kötü gelmiyor insana herhalde, çok daha kötü olsa bile ne kadar kötü olduğunu hatırlayamıyoruz çünkü hatırlamanın etkisi deneyimlemenin etkisinden daha zayıf.

Sonuçta "şimdiki zaman'da geçen kültürel eserlerle ilişkilenmeye alışığız. Ama bu kesintisiz șimdiki zarman hissi artık yaşantımızın bir parçası olmaktan çıktı. Şimdiki zaman kesintili hale geldi. Her gün, hatta her günün her saati kendisinden önce gelen zamanın yerine geçerek onu geçersiz kılıyor, dolayısıyla hayatlarımızdaki olaylar da yalnız sürekli güncellenen bir haber akışına göre bir anlam ifade ediyor.  

Amelia Hruby

What is the relationship of the famous author to their famous books anyway? If I had bad manners and was personally unpleasant and spoke with an irritating accent, which in my opinion is probably the case, would it have anything to do with my novels? Of course not. The work would be the same, no different. And what do the books gain by being attached to me, my face, my mannerisms, in all their demoralising specificity? Nothing. So why, why, is it done this way? Whose interests does it serve? It makes me miserable, keeps me away from the one thing in my life that has any meaning, contributes nothing to the public interest, satisfies only the basest and most prurient curiosities on the part of readers, and serves to arrange literary discourse entirely around the domineering figure of the author, whose lifestyle and idiosyncrasies must be picked over in lurid detail for no reason. I keep encountering this person, who is myself, and I hate her with all mny energy. I hate her ways of expresing herself, I hate her appearance, and I hate her opinions about everything. And yet when other people read about her, they believe that she is me. Confronting this fact makes me feel I am already dead.

When I submitted the first book, I just wanted to make enough money to finish the next one. I never advertised myself as a psychologically robust person, capable of withstanding extensive public inquiries into my personality and upbringing. People who intentionally become famous — I mean people who, after a little taste of fame, want more and more of it — are, and I honestly believe this, deeply psychologically ill. The fact that we are exposed to these people everywhere in our culture, as if they are not only normal but attractive and enviable, indicates the extent of our disfiguring social disease. 

Stella

And who am I to ask for humility and openness from other people? What have I ever given the world to ask so much in return?

Maybe we’re just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing.

elly

I also feel certain it's better to be deeply loved 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.

Vojtech

Refreshingly human and down to earth, no forced drama or plot twist or sharp turns, only the very human and realistic drama of living life. I read it all in one sitting (oops), which never happens, because it was such a comfortable and interesting book to read. 

1) I found out Sally Rooney was Irish because Dublin was mentioned only about 500 times in this book. 

2) I enjoyed Eileen and Alice's email exchanges, which were a unique way to convey their inner thoughts as well as to progress the story. The real-world problems juxtaposed with seemingly trivial personal struggles were good reflections of existential life crises. 

1) I found out Sally Rooney was Irish because Dublin was mentioned only about 500 times in this book. 

2) I enjoyed Eileen and Alice's email exchanges, which were a unique way to convey their inner thoughts as well as to progress the story. The real-world problems juxtaposed with seemingly trivial personal struggles were good reflections of existential life crises. 

Sehr schönes Buch, sehr ähnlich zu Intermezzo. Das Ende hat mich leider etwas enttäuscht. 

Finia

tore through this. has a way about it that keeps you intertwined and connected to the story she’s telling, whether it’s an aside about world politics or thoughts on christianity. 

all characters harbour a sense of relatability, you can kind of see yourself in each. there are points where you love them and you kind of hate them too. 

Nat Wong

tore through this. has a way about it that keeps you intertwined and connected to the story she’s telling, whether it’s an aside about world politics or thoughts on christianity. 

all characters harbour a sense of relatability, you can kind of see yourself in each. there are points where you love them and you kind of hate them too. 

a really intimate sort of read.

Schön zu lesen, allerdings in meinen Augen ein bisschen oberflächlich...

Marlene Renkl

Sally Rooney has a way with the english language like I have never read before. Her descriptions have a level of detail that makes you wonder if her eyes see the world the same as everyone else. 

This book is an exploration into the world of relationships and friendships. It made me feel seen! Sally Rooney writes about the realities of literally just living on our planet. She highlights the fact that sometimes the lowest of lows can contribute to feeling our highest of highs, and how sometimes there is beauty in the things that aren’t said or aren’t visible to us. 

The characters in this book and how they interact with one another made me feel every emotion I think I have. And although sometimes I questioned the seemingly erratic responses of the characters, I did often think to myself that I possibly might feel the same myself in the given situation. I loved reading Alice and Eileen’s letters to each other and tabbed more than one or two of their extended and detailed rants about the meaning of hardships in their life and the meaning of life itself. 

On a slightly lighter note, I loved Simon. He’s perfect and I would have been as deluded as Eileen was until the end.

Eimear O'Connor 

Sally Rooney has a way with the english language like I have never read before. Her descriptions have a level of detail that makes you wonder if her eyes see the world the same as everyone else. 

This book is an exploration into the world of relationships and friendships. It made me feel seen! Sally Rooney writes about the realities of literally just living on our planet. She highlights the fact that sometimes the lowest of lows can contribute to feeling our highest of highs, and how sometimes there is beauty in the things that aren’t said or aren’t visible to us. 

The characters in this book and how they interact with one another made me feel every emotion I think I have. And although sometimes I questioned the seemingly erratic responses of the characters, I did often think to myself that I possibly might feel the same myself in the given situation. I loved reading Alice and Eileen’s letters to each other and tabbed more than one or two of their extended and detailed rants about the meaning of hardships in their life and the meaning of life itself. 

On a slightly lighter note, I loved Simon. He’s perfect and I would have been as deluded as Eileen was until the end.

I do adore sally rooney- yet I feel large portions of this book were self insertions without much purpose in its craft or purpose to the overall work. I also feel there was so much more depth to explore with all the characters and plots introduced, and we only brushed on the surface of them. I’d love to know more about the inner workings of Felix’s mind, for example. Or sentiments brushed on, but not delved in to.  

Yet, the themes were still beautiful, and the characters all had the intricate nuances of the human experience like her other works. I still felt ready at the end. 

I do adore sally rooney- yet I feel large portions of this book were self insertions without much purpose in its craft or purpose to the overall work. I also feel there was so much more depth to explore with all the characters and plots introduced, and we only brushed on the surface of them. I’d love to know more about the inner workings of Felix’s mind, for example. Or sentiments brushed on, but not delved in to.  

Yet, the themes were still beautiful, and the characters all had the intricate nuances of the human experience like her other works. I still felt ready at the end. 

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 breakup, 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?

Once again, Sally Rooney captures the essence of life. Womanhood and figuring everything out and growing older with friends and being depressed and complicated feeling about family. I adore her writing, I only wish the final epilogue chapter didn’t exist. Stop at ch29!!

Brynn Sklar

Alice meets Felix 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?

I dare say this is the most influential fiction book for me in my twenties (still going). It touches so much of my own thought patterns. The main characters feel like my own friends, and I love them for who they are, their quirks and flaws and fear and dreams and insecurities. It also provides a satisfying ending which I need in my own life. 

I have attempted normal people and I didn’t like it. I think it’s a stage of life thing. Although I would still read through all of Sally’s just because I love her writings and the intensity she fills me. Love ya Sally.

Tinnei

I dare say this is the most influential fiction book for me in my twenties (still going). It touches so much of my own thought patterns. The main characters feel like my own friends, and I love them for who they are, their quirks and flaws and fear and dreams and insecurities. It also provides a satisfying ending which I need in my own life. 

I have attempted normal people and I didn’t like it. I think it’s a stage of life thing. Although I would still read through all of Sally’s just because I love her writings and the intensity she fills me. Love ya Sally.

Dare I say her best book , I loved it so so so muchhh

I think the writing is very honest with very interesting perspectives. However, I sort of feel it lacks depth and quite frankly, pretty vague scenarios in most parts where you’d want more, so plenty of ‘take it as you will’ moments. 

Ariariari

cok akillica yazilmis, demodelik tasiyor bu yuzden. 

ceren koc

cok akillica yazilmis, demodelik tasiyor bu yuzden. 

(ve bir normal people degil)

Katherin 

I actually didn't finish this, my ghost did, because when I got to the part where Eileen says "lately I've been thinking about the collapse of the bronze age" I hurled myself off the nearest bridge

Regan Martin

Gdzie jesteś, piękny świecie

Maja

Maureen

"my problem is that I'm annoyed at everyone else for not having all the answers, when I also have none. And who am I to ask for humility and openness from other people? What have I ever given the world to ask so much in return?"

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

***

Her BEST novel yet imo. Toward the end, I had been set on rating this 4 stars... but the last part changed my mind. She definitely poured her heart into writing this bc Alice and Felix; Eileen and Simon >>>> all her other characters. 

Sally Rooney just gets me—realistically speaking, I’ve never related more to a fictional character than I do with all 4 of them 🥹 (adulting-wise). She gathered all my anxieties and put them on paper—hence, the 5 stars.

Katerina

Deep, intellectual, thought-provoking, and mature. 

“Beautiful World, Where Are You?” is about two best friends, who go by their lives physically separated from one another but deeply connected emotionally. Throughout the book, they share email correspondences that let us have a peek into their worldview and their most cherished thoughts. And as they both go by their normal, ordinary lives, we get to witness a portion of it and experience every insight, every pain. 

What always amazes me about Sally Rooney is how she masterfully portrays the silence and things unsaid. Miscommunication seems to be something she always explores in her work. The characters are flawed and real. Much like “Normal People”, this book was extremely raw, cutting to humans’ deepest desires. 

At times I felt I loved this book more than anything else I’ve read from Sally Rooney. Yes, only at times. It often left me staying up and wondering — about the world, about love, about ourselves, about politics and I think, most of all, it left me wondering about friendship. The true one, the one that doesn’t ask or require, the one that waits patiently and never gets old. Perhaps I loved it most because of this.

Because, as much as Rooney explores Marxism, socialism, art, God, past and present, the main subject in “Beautiful World, Where Are You” is relationships. What we always go back to, no matter what happens. Primitive, yes, but most of all - human. 

Masterfully written to the last detail, “Beautiful World, Where Are You” got me in a storm of existential thoughts. What more is there to ask for?

Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world? 

Yes, they did! They found their own lil beautiful world. I love Alice and Eileen's friendship so much. I also found their emails to each other very interesting. They're like two of my personalities. 

I, of course, loved this too because of the writing. If Sally Rooney have zero fans, I'm dead. I want this book to have an adaptation too btw like normal people and cwf. So the SCU is complete and i can edit them lol.

Anyways, it shouldn't have took me this long to read this book but uni life just fucks with me right now, i just really want this to be on my February reads so i squeezed in some reading time. Truly so many books to read, so little time :((

Sajiya Chaudhary

I started 2021 with Normal People, and couldn't get over the book. Marianne and Connell, their relationship, anxieties, and finally understanding each other, and themselves. 
BWWAY is, I guess, her take on what the world went through in past two years, and the whole world had a reawakening. People realised that happiness didn't come from staying at home, alone, away, cut off from the world. But from the ordinary routine, meeting the same set of people each day, looking forward to the weekend, and other seemingly mundane stuff. And here Rooney tries to say this but with the help of Alice, Eileen, Simon, and Felix, who are all trying to understand their place in this world, in each other's lives, in their own bodies. 
Her writing style is unique - a lot of people don't like that she doesn't use quotation marks, which is fine by me. I feel much more connected to her words. The beginning might not make any sense at first, but it gets better with the pages passing, the characters start to become familiar with each other and one by one the layers starts coming off. And I started to relate more and more to all of them together. 
With every book I sort of remember the story - what happened and then what happened- there are few characters I fall in love with, but with Rooney, I remember the characters, their many flaws, and just their presence in myself. I recognise myself in so many of her creations.

warm, beautiful, gives me hope in a miserable world

Chris Dailey

Deliberate pacing and seemingly intentional shockless plot produce an insightful look at deep friendships and new encounters as a group of Irish Millennials navigate the current sense of dread and melancholy affecting their nation and generation. Ostensibly about two sets of couples that fumble and trip into loving partnerships, the story is more about the challenges of forming a new idea of success both personally and professionally - one that is profoundly separate from their parent's. Full of Rooney's typically blunt, yet sensual sexuality and tell-tale signs of 2020 - the dots on a texting iPhone, mentions of the pandemic, the novel is at it's best when it's capturing the back and forth of people trying to find their way. A bit high-brow at times and unconvincingly at that, the story succeeds in painting the duality of being anxious on a macro level, but satisfied personally. This is a highly readable mediation on modern love, friendship, careerism, and anxiety.

Here is the extraordinary, thrilling new novel from Sally Rooney, author of the internationally bestselling Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Beautiful World, Where Are You tells the story of Alice and Eileen, two best friends approaching their thirties, and on very different trajectories. Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he'd like to travel to Italy 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?

Gelaine Trinidad

Sohini Roy

This was an interesting read- as is typical of a Rooney novel, we experience the thoughts, lives, and pretentiousness of young people in Dublin trying to figure out their personal relationships. Yet, as predictable as the synopsis of her novels come to be, they always hit home and make me feel deeply for the characters. I think this is the first novel of hers I've read that seems to end happily though- some parts of it were a bit slow, such as the randomized (maybe supposed to be insightful, but felt kind of useless) content of Alice and Eileen's emails, but overall a thought-provoking read. Several parts of it were annotation-worthy and I resisted the urge to highlight my library book. I think my favorite quote of all was "I feel so frightened of being hurt- not the suffering, which I know I can handle, but the indignity of suffering, the indignity of being open".

Abbie Duggan

I’m continually amazed at how little Sally Rooney has to say in order to deeply understand her characters. Rooney’s writing has been criticized for being about “nothing” with conversations that feel awkward and empty. But that’s exactly what makes me fall in love with her stories—they are complex in their simplicity, and isn’t that life itself?

This book is about relationships, as her other books are, but what struck me the most with this novel is the dialogue on relationship to self. As Alice and Eileen navigate through their opinions on climate change, religion, sex, and friendship, through their romantic relationships and perceived successes and failures, what they are really analyzing is the world and their place in it.

Messy, complicated, frustrating… this novel is a stunning portrait of the search for self in this beautiful world. Five stars, as my love for Rooney’s writing holds strong.

I guess you could say the old ways of being together were wrong — they were! — and that we didn't want to repeat old mistakes — we didn't. But when we tore down what confined us, what did we have in mind to replace it? […] What do we have now? Instead? Nothing. 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.

While reading this wouldn’t be exactly my cup of tea, I did enjoy it. I liked 

 show and this book definitely shares some familiarities about how characters talk and behave. (Somewhat obnoxiously, I guess.) 

Also, lack of quotation marks has not distracted me at all. McCarthy would be proud, I assume. (If it was in Texas and there was a stronger presence of evil.)

While reading this wouldn’t be exactly my cup of tea, I did enjoy it. I liked Normal People show and this book definitely shares some familiarities about how characters talk and behave. (Somewhat obnoxiously, I guess.) 

Also, lack of quotation marks has not distracted me at all. McCarthy would be proud, I assume. (If it was in Texas and there was a stronger presence of evil.)

Vojtech &
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

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Vojtech &Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

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Vojtech &
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney