Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Meanwhile, in Dublin, Alice's university friend Eileen Lydon works a low-paying literary job and explores her attraction to a childhood friend who seems to return her feelings but continues seeing other women. She invites him to accompany her to Rome, where he falls in love with her but resents what he takes to be her superior attitude. After moving from Dublin to a small seaside town, she meets Felix, a local with a similar background they both grew up working-class, and both have absent fathers who works in a shipping warehouse. Alice Kelleher, 29, has suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of her work's popularity. Rooney (Normal People) continues her exploration of class, sex, and mental health with a cool, captivating story about a successful Irish writer, her friend, and their lovers. With Beautiful World, Where Are You, she exquisitely captures the feeling of living in the shadow of an uncertain future while trying to appreciate the grace of our intimate relationships. This conflict of priorities sums up a Rooney novel. “When we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world’s resources.we were worrying about sex and friendship instead,” Eileen writes. In a series of email exchanges, the women detail their tumultuous love affairs and share heady musings on religion, nationalism, and their relationship with a society seemingly hell-bent on destruction. Alice, a famous writer, moves to western Ireland to recuperate from a mental breakdown, leaving her bestie, Eileen, alone in Dublin to handle a dead-end job and the fallout of a breakup. Her third novel explores both themes with aplomb, following two friends on the brink of turning 30. It’s hard to say what fascinates the wildly popular Irish author Sally Rooney more: young love or the doomsday vibes of the 21st century.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney