Beautiful World, Where Are You is not an easily consumable novel and I don’t think it’s meant to be. It’s a highly intellectual novel reminding me quite a bit of Anna Karenina, which I think it’s meant to do.
I previously read and enjoyed Normal People specifically for its richly drawn, dynamic characters whom we get to know intimately. I was expecting more of the same from Beautiful World and unfortunately, from my perspective at least, that’s not what this novel offers.
Beautiful World focuses on four characters: longtime friends Alice and Eileen and their respective male partners, Felix and Simon whom they strike up relationships with as the book progresses. Much of the story is told through emails exchanged by Alice and Eileen, both of whom work in the literary sphere; Alice is a successful and reclusive novelist eschewing fame, Eileen a listless, low-paid editorial assistant.
While the book chronicles the love lives and friendships of these characters as with Anna Karenina they seem to exist more as a entertaining element and props to convey the thoughts and ideas of Sally Rooney on life, politics, modern society, capitalism, class, books, and the way art, specifically writing, intersects with our transactional world.
Now, the thoughts and ideas conveyed are incredibly insightful and acutely well written as one would expect of Rooney, but the deeply intellectual exchanges of these millennials seem far fetched in a distractingly contrived way to this millennial. It’s very classical type structure within a modern novel.
Plenty to appreciate here, though not the book I was anticipating or would have preferred.
If you’re looking for the millennial response to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina this one’s for you!
That Bookish Life 