Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Dublin, Ireland

There are spoilers in this review. But honestly, who cares. I’ll save you the bother of even reading my review about this terrible book: DO NOT READ IT.

This is literally one of the worst books I have ever read. The only other book I can think of right now that may be worse is The Painted Bird, and that’s only because that book was disgusting in every way imaginable. I am really questioning the Goodreads readers at the moment because this book won in 2021. And it is terrible. There is no way around it.

I like the idea of being picked up in the middle of a story and not given much context. It’s fun to figure out what happened and what is going to happen next. But, spoiler alert, nothing happens. There is literally no plot to this novel. I kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing ever does. The book tries to be character driven, but the characters are unlikeable and boring. Felix provides some relief to the drone of the other characters (Brene Brown would say he’s living a wholehearted life), but his character is barely developed.

Rooney basically puts herself in the novel by having Alice and Eileen discuss people and sex and books about ordinary people and sex are important. That would be fine to discuss except the characters in this book are not ordinary. Eileen is supposed to be this loner weirdo, yet she’s pined after the whole novel, and the author makes a point to talk about how attractive every character is. Simon is an important government advisor (he doesn’t think he’s important - but he certainly makes enough money to be important) and Alice is a successful millionaire author. Ordinary people struggle with things. Alice struggled with her mental health (but that was not very developed) and Eileen was simply whiny.

The book would have been okay if it were not for the end. Alice and Eileen communicate throughout the novel via email and get into some discussions about politics and the impending collapse of society. It’s refreshing to see a novel being bold enough to declare slightly left beliefs, but everything was so basic I wanted to skip over it. If I wanted to know how basic white girls felt about the state of the world, I could ask any random person in the grocery store, I really don’t need to read about it.

But (spoiler alert again), Eileen ends up getting pregnant in the end. Great, millennials are having less children mostly because they can’t afford it (and the social pressure of HAVING to have kids or being ostracized has decreased). For most people, myself included, it’s not some huge part of my identity that I need to justify to anyone. But Eileen goes on this weird soliloquy about it being okay that her life is going to be defined by her motherhood and how she had to give up her extreme feminist views in order to be happy. It sounded like angry, anti-feminist boomer propaganda. But Salley Rooney is 30 years old…so fucking weird. If that section was anywhere but the very end of the novel, I would have not finished this book (and I NEVER DNF books).

This was my first Sally Rooney novel. But I won’t be reading another one any time soon unless somebody seriously convinces me that they are worth it. I feel like I need a mint after the bad taste this one left in my mouth.

Review by the Numbers

Overall: 1/5

Writing: 1/5

Message: 1/5

Plot: 1/5

Character Development: 1/5

Challenges Satisfied:

- Ireland (Reading My Way Around the World Challenge)

- A Book You Knew Nothing About (2022 PopSugar Reading Challenge)

- A 2021 Award-Winning Book (2022 Fully Booked Reading Challenge)

- A Book about Women’s Experiences (My Diversity Challenge)

- A Book in Which the Characters Argue (2022 Gotta Read ‘Em All Challenge)