Sally Rooney’s review for Beautiful World, Where Are You? What the critics say

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Sally Rooney has released her third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You?

The best-selling author of Conversations with Friends and Normal People explores friendship and fame in his new book, published by Faber.

Much emphasis has been placed on the pressure on Rooney to emulate the critically adored Normal People, which was adapted into a hit BBC series starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones last year.

Many Beautiful World critics, however, have commented that Rooney seems to have struggled with his newfound fame and that this is reflected in both the themes and the quality of his writing.

In a three-star review for The Independent, critic Martin Chilton praised Rooneys for the sharp and insightful observations of his millennial colleagues, but said it was difficult to care about his characters and their issues.

Beautiful World, Where Are You is thought-provoking and enjoyable read, he wrote. My main problem was that other than rooting for the insecure and hypersensitive Eileen, I couldn’t find in my heart to care the slightest bit about Alice, Felix, or the whiny Simon.

A review in The Observer said the book fell far short of Normal People 2 and that Beautiful World felt like its most embarrassing book yet.

Highly ambivalent about her own pleasures, Rooney seems to say that what she has to offer as a writer is not enough, but that is also all there is, wrote critic Anthony Cummins. .

Will readers who love it care about all of this? Ultimately, it’s hard not to feel that her greatest artistic challenge is not retooling romantic comedy for an era of political crisis, but the simpler, if not less delicate, task of continuing her work.

The success of Normal People and Conversations with Friends made Sally Rooneys Beautiful World, Where Are You one of the most anticipated releases of the year.

(Faber / Getty)

The Evening Standards review made a similar point, agreeing that Rooneys’ writing felt awkward and we can’t really fall in love with this quartet, or even find them particularly interesting.

The email essays are compelling, but they don’t feel convincingly integrated into the characters who write them, the review added. Plus, there’s very little drama or momentum, or the kind that has supported Connell and Marianne’s relationship, for example.

In a more positive review, The Guardian said fans of Rooneys’ past work will appreciate the pain and uncertainty of his characters as adults, his path with emotional difficulties, and his brilliance at showing the barriers we put. between ourselves and the love of others.

The final third of Beautiful World, Where Are You, when the four characters meet and connect, is a tour de force, said reviewer Anne Enright. The dialogue never falters and the prose burns the page. However, it takes some time to bring these people together in the same room, and this move towards intimacy is intentionally delayed by Rooney’s descriptive prose, which slowly warms up.

Meanwhile, the i Paper called Beautiful World a Weird and Flawed Book for Strange and Flawed Times.

As intentional as it is, this cerebral quartet of characters didn’t move me as much as Conversations With Friends Frances and Bobbi, or Normal Peoples Marianne and Connell did, critic Olivia Sudjic said. Their back stories seem clunky rather than artfully compressed. Their bodies are idealized to an incorporeal saint.

She later added: She remains one of our most talented writers and luckily she still writes, but she can’t go back to the pre-prelapse times that made her previous books possible, observing the world without the observe.

Beautiful people, where are you? is out now.

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