The Complex Reality of “Beautiful World, Where Are You”
September debut of Sally Rooney’s third novel
By Nina Johnson, Arts Editorial Assistant
No matter if you’re a literary snob, a TikTok user or simply a burgeoning adult, Sally Rooney has been a household name for about two years now. On Sept. 7, her third and highly anticipated novel was released to the masses. Rooney’s new beloved characters, Alice, Eileen, Felix and Simon, who all live in Ireland, remind us why loving someone is the most natural thing we know how to do, but that caring for the state of the world around us is equally so.
Rooney, author of “Normal People and Conversations with Friends,” writes about love. Though, most famously, she discusses how many factors really go into love, especially in the twenty-first century. Her newest novel, “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” structures itself differently than those previous and clearly heightens her level of concern in how to properly love someone in this life.
Rooney is gifted with nuance. The plots of her stories are simple and viscerally peaceful and features only a few characters the reader ever ends up knowing well. The narratives of her stories take place in placid towns with “normal” events: school, dinner parties, monotonous jobs and confusing lovers. For her average reader, their lives look like this, too. Rooney’s characters are complex and their relationships are often messy–just like the rest of us–and that’s where her brilliance in analysis shines.
Though many can appreciate the genius of a gifted writer, Rooney’s narratives are plainly constructed for a certain age group: basically, anyone under 40. Understanding yourself in the world has always been a part of growing up, but Rooney elucidates how starkly different the current young adults and youth of today will have it from anyone in the past. The characters of “Beautiful World, Where Are You”–all with differing degrees, backgrounds and outlooks–still end up asking themselves the same question: how do you love someone, when everything seems to be falling apart?
For the average existentialist, this book would be highly revered, but Rooney insinuates that at the present state of the world, shouldn’t we all be existentialists? She reveals the various things she’s worried about through letters written back and forth between two of the main characters. The letters alone paint such a personal discourse, one all readers can resonate with. While writing about the complicated state of their relationships, the conversation quickly shifts to what Eileen calls a “general systems collapse,” meaning the present problems facing the world (climate change, steepening wealth disparities, a pandemic, etc.)
The characters struggle to find a place to put their love and question the ethics of loving someone when the whole world seems like it’s on fire. Rooney opens the conversation up to her readers. As the new generation paves their way in the world, working to boost resumes, fall in love, get a good job and be a good friend, it’s difficult to decipher what truly seems right. Rooney gives us a vocabulary for these fears and ensures that loving someone will never be the wrong choice.