Beautiful World Where Are You by Sally Rooney

When multiple friends I know in real life start talking to me about a certain author I realise that this is someone who has broken through to the mainstream. My friends are very intelligent and literate, but they don't generally follow the latest publications with as much geeky rigour as I do along with other readers wrapped up in the online bookish community. Yet, over the past few years multiple people IRL have asked me for recommendations of a book that is exactly like “Normal People”. Few authors have experienced such a meteoric rise to fame as Sally Rooney. Since the publication of her first two novels and the TV adaptation of her second novel, her books have been alternately hailed as representing the voice of a generation and pigeonholed as overhyped naval-gazing millennial fiction. Personally, I feel a bit bemused by any such strident claims as her books strike me as simply well-written, engaging, funny and smart fiction which is well-aligned with our present times. But Rooney's popularity feels more like a chance occurrence which could have happened to any of her contemporaries such as Belinda McKeon, Jade Sharma or Naoise Dolan. Nevertheless, the simmering anticipation for Rooney's new novel “Beautiful World Where Are You” has made it one of the publishing events of the year. I can assure you it's an extremely enjoyable novel and Rooney enthusiasts won't be disappointed. 

When commenting on this new novel most Sally Rooney fans and critics will probably remark on how one of its central characters, Alice, superficially resembles the author. She's published two extremely successful novels and feels ambivalent about the newfound fame she's achieved as an author. And Alice isn't shy about her opinions concerning readers' prying interest in the author's personal life, the vanity of fellow writers and the precarious position books have as a commodity in our current culture. She's also prone to complaining about her privileged position: “They never tire of giving me awards, do they? It's a shame I've tired so quickly of receiving them, or my life would be endless fun.” But she also vividly describes the deleterious effect such fame has upon her: “I feel like I've been locked in a smoke-filled room with thousands of people shouting at me incomprehensibly day and night for the last several years.” We're made aware of how Alice previously suffered a breakdown from stress. Alice's celebrity doesn't change the initial awkwardness of going on a date with someone she meets on a dating app. In fact, it makes it worse when her date, Felix, discovers that she's well known and this squeamish situation is realistically described. Though it's easy to draw parallels between this character and the author and assume Rooney is using this opportunity to vent her own frustrations, it's important to emphasize how the novel contains a carefully calibrated balance of points of view.

Another primary character is Eileen, Alice's best friend since university. Much of this novel's text is composed of messages between these women who now live in separate places since Alice moved to a more rural town in Ireland and Eileen remained in Dublin. They ruminate on a wide range of subjects including religion, history, capitalism, gender, art and concepts of beauty. It's fitting that Rooney's first novel was titled “Conversations with Friends” because this is what all three of her novels concern. It's interesting giving this novel the Bechdel test because Alice and Eileen's messages also include lengthly ruminations about love and their respective love interests. However, it seems only natural that they discuss men at length as I do the same with friends whom I exchange lengthy emails. While Alice begins a tentative relationship with Felix, Eileen experiences a hot and cold relationship with Simon, someone she's known since childhood. Like with “Normal People”, this new novel contains a traditional romantic storyline where the reader is left wondering: will they or won't they get together? And I was drawn into the suspense of this plot as I grew to care and form opinions about the characters as if they were friends of my own.

While readers will quickly identify Rooney's closeness to Alice, I think it's equally easy to see the fidelity she feels towards Eileen. Eileen works as a poorly-paid editor of a small literary review and struggles to pay the expensive rent of her Dublin flat-share. At the launch party and reading for an issue, we see what a meagre life she has selling only two copies of the publication and spending most of her time directing people to the toilets. It's easy to imagine that if Rooney hadn't achieved the fame that she has this could easily have been her life. I also felt a strong affinity towards Eileen who struggles to embrace opportunities which come her way. The narrative takes care to fill out Eileen's backstory more than any other character in the book. We also come to intimately understand the positions of bisexual Felix who works in a gruelling warehouse job and Simon who is a devout Catholic that has a burgeoning career in politics. Each of these characters' positions are dramatically played out in their interactions with each other to show the strengths and weaknesses of each. Rooney thoughtfully tests their points of view when faced with real world challenges and the way in which other people react to them.

At points it feels as if the characters are like Sims figures from that video game where we read how they go throughout their days perfunctorily fulfilling certain duties and actions. I feel like this style of narrative reflects a kind modern self consciousness which has arisen due to social media and the sense that we're living out a simulated existence. A character might get lost for hours on their phone or regularly check dating apps without any intention of arranging actual dates. It's a way in which Rooney so skilfully portrays the feeling of a certain generation within a certain demographic. All her characters are struggling with the way in which to be an adult and feel (as most generations do) that their generation might be the last. Eileen writes to Alice: “I know we agree that civilisation is presently in its decadent declining phase, and that lurid ugliness is the predominant visual feature of modern life.” One of the biggest questions in the book is how will these characters find the motivation to continue and have fulfilling lives when the prospect of a future filled with environmental and societal collapse looms before them. As well as giving a nuanced depiction of friendship and romance, this novel also meaningfully addresses this issue and provides a surprisingly hopeful message. Rooney certainly isn't the only author people should be reading, but her writing is excellent and this new novel is extremely intelligent, moving and I'm sure many readers will strongly connect with it.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney is a writer that stands out as the voice of young Ireland. The natural milieu of her characters are intellectual college educated women and men in their teens and twenties. From her first novel “Conversations with Friends” to her new Booker longlisted “Normal People” she presents their stories about grappling with relationships and finding a place in society with deceptively straightforward prose. While this runs the risk of appearing to have a parochial view of the world, it moreover reads as emotionally honest and engaging in a way that few writers can pull off. This new novel is the story of Marianne and Connell who come from very different socio-economic backgrounds. Connell's mother works as a cleaner at Marianne's family home. The differences in class seem an inconsequential part of their relationship at first, but as they get older it has more of an effect on how they connect to each other. The story charts the staggered journey of their bond from 2011 to 2015. You can read this novel for the insights it gives into modern life and the plight of a section of an emerging generation, but it's moreover a modern romance which meaningfully engages the reader in the characters' growth as individuals and tantalizes with the question: will they or won't they get together? 

Before reading this novel I went to a literary event and bumped into the excellent writer Ruth Gilligan who remarked how it's not been remarked in many reviews how at its core “Normal People” works as a really gripping romance story. I wonder if literary critics are hesitant to acknowledge this fact out of a fear that Sally Rooney will appear like a less intellectual writer. It's something Rooney herself seems to grapple with as her character Connell discovers Jane Austen's novels and the pleasure of an old fashioned romance story. “Normal People” is really an updated version of “Pride and Prejudice” or “Emma” for the way it takes seriously the struggle to find a real emotional connection amidst societal influences. It asks questions such as to what degree does social perception factor into our private relationships? How does wealth and power influence our connection to each other? In what way are our current relationships hampered by the emotional baggage of our pasts? But these larger questions linger in the background without intruding upon the pleasures to be found in the plot of Rooney's story. Marianne and Connell's relationship is on a par with that of the great tortured romances in literature like Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler whose evident passion for each other is also stymied by circumstance and tragic misunderstanding. 

Rooney has a particular talent for writing about the quiet emotional core and inner conflicts of her characters without any flourishes or elaborate language. This struck me following the journey of her character Frances in “Conversations with Friends” and it's even more powerfully portrayed in Marianne whose complex toxic family situation is slowly revealed over the course of the novel. At one point she observes of Marianne that “She wants to tell him things. But it’s too late now, and anyway it has never done her good to tell anyone.” Rooney describes in this powerfully understated way how the most significant things are often left unsaid and how we hinder ourselves from forming lasting connections out of a fear of truly revealing ourselves. At the same time she shows how the nature of being dictates we are all locked in a struggle between our inner and outer realities: “In just a few weeks’ time Marianne will live with different people, and life will be different. But she herself will not be different. She'll be the same person, trapped in her own body. There's nowhere she can go that would free her from this. A different place, different people, what does that matter?”

It feels like Rooney is deeply suspicious of the elitism of some literary circles. At university avid reader Connell develops a desire to become a writer himself but he's wary that the apparent insights fiction appears to give might be false. As someone from a working class background he's especially cognizant of how class factors into who consumes literature. When attending a reading he observes: “It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.” At the same time, literature is a method of creating a cultural dialogue that he still wants to participate in. But I wonder if this instance also gives an insight into why Rooney is so steadfast in writing about characters that are young, intelligent and Irish rather than imaginatively inhabiting the lives of people who are radically different from herself. I can't imagine Rooney writing about the plight of a Syrian refugee as Donal Ryan does in his accomplished novel “From a Low and Quiet Sea”. I imagine this would feel to her like an act for the sake of appearances and showily engaging in cultural dialogue. That's not to say Connell's feelings are necessarily her own, but that it's striking in the two novels Rooney has produced that she's stuck to writing about the lives and concerns of a limited set of people. This doesn't demonstrate a lack of imagination, but the conscious intent of a talented writer. 

Since Donal Ryan is also longlisted for the Booker prize, it also seems interesting to compare “Normal People” to another Irish longlisted title “Milkman” by Anna Burns. Rooney and Burns have very different styles of writing and focuses - “Normal People” is set in rural Ireland and Dublin while “Milkman” is set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. But there's a striking coincidental parallel between the novels in that they both feature socially outcast female protagonists who read constantly to consciously escape their surroundings and develop relationships with men unwilling to label that relationship as committed. I don't know if this says anything significant about Ireland, modern social culture or the dynamic between men and women, but it's an interesting connection. While we can easily debate about the inherent worth of the Booker prize and the choices that the judges have made in their longlist this year, I enjoy how the prize has prompted me to read these new novels in close proximity to each other. But regardless of book prizes or literary culture in general, “Normal People” is a wonderfully engaging novel. 

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

It’s a challenging thing to write about ordinary modern life and daily interactions with friends without making it seem frivolous. Part of me was unsure what to feel about “Conversations with Friends” by Sally Rooney at first because so much of the story casually follows the lives of a group of relatively privileged friends. The novel is narrated from the perspective of introverted young poet and university student Frances. She and her performance poetry collaborator/ex-girlfriend Bobbi befriend journalist/photographer Melissa and her semi-famous/effortlessly handsome husband Nick. Frances describes her time with this group of people as they attend book/art gallery launches, parties or holidays in France – all while conversing about politics, popular culture and gossip about each other. In particular, the story focuses on Frances’ challenging affair with Nick and the effect this has upon everyone around them. The novel builds a subtle power as it traces the disconnect between what we say, how we act and what we’re really feeling. She shows how it usually takes time and distance to really understand the meaning of what we felt and our friends’ different positions. It’s striking the way Rooney captures the sense of alienation we can feel within friendships where we often struggle to converse about the things that really matter.

This novel reminded me somewhat of Belinda McKeon’s recent novel “Tender” about the tumultuous friendship/affair a woman named Catherine had with her primarily homosexual friend James during their university years. It also felt in some ways similar to Eimear McBride’s “The Lesser Bohemians” about a young woman’s heart-wrenching tryst with an older actor. All these novels meaningfully portray the voices of refreshingly new young female perspectives on modern Ireland, but use quite different styles and focus on very different ideas. While ostensibly about romance, these stories are about women who aren’t as interested in establishing a long-term partner or husband as relating to their sexual partners as friends. They also poignantly portray the realities of sex in new ways. As well as recording conversations, Rooney includes different kinds of text messages or emails some characters send to each other. It’s easy to read different things into the phrasing of these communications and it feels familiar how Frances spends time puzzling over their real meaning as well as composing, deleting or not responded to certain messages. It’s also poignant how Frances encounters real difficulties in her life such a painful medical condition, her father’s alcoholism and strained financial circumstances, but finds it difficult to confide these matters to her friends.

Something that struck me about this novel was the way Catherine quite often feels emotionally slighted by Nick, but seldom thinks to consider the feelings of her ex-girlfriend Bobbi and how this affair might be impacting her. It seems like we often default to a state of victimhood where we feel we’re not receiving the attention we believe we deserve yet don’t realize how emotionally neglectful we’re being about people close to us that we take for granted. This leads to a lot of darkly searching questions about the real meaning of friendship and its limitations which is something I’ve been thinking about a lot since also reading Lionel Shriver’s new novella “The Standing Chandelier” so recently. I really appreciated the way “Conversations with Friends” shows how we don’t often understand our own feelings until we’re confronted with trying to communicate them to someone close to us. It’s a challenging, ever-evolving process, but this novel movingly shows how it’s one which can help us to personally grow and connect to each other.