Amazon.com.au:Customer reviews: Beautiful World, Where Are You

Top positive review

Doesn’t stray far from the author’s other two novels

Reviewed in Australia on 30 September 2021

If you are a fan of Irish millennial author, Sally Rooney, and her other two novels, Conversation with friends, and, Normal people, you are probably in for a treat. That is, unless you felt that these two works said everything you wanted hear on love, friendship and living as an intellectual, hip, 20 something in Ireland in our current times. All in all, the latest novel is an easy read. The style is economical and lean, like a contemporary Hemingway. It probably plays to Rooney’s strength in not straying to far thematically or narratively from Rooney’s other works. Worth a read.

2 people found this helpful

Top critical review

All critical reviews›

Didn't get all the hyper about this one.

Reviewed in Australia on 15 September 2021

My first taste of Sally Rooney and sadly, probably my last. I didn't enjoy this book at all. I found it long winded and aimless (I feel like I was missing the point of it all?) Characters were obnoxious and not even likeable so I struggled to take to any of them. Those long winded emails were a drag to read! Started losing patience halfway in, and it didn't get any better. Ended up skimming the rest just to finish it. Here's a quick summary - Four people: they like each other, don't like each other, are intimate, then not intimate, and somewhat depressed. And that's it. Ending didn't offer any resolve or bring anything new.

9 people found this helpful

Sort by

Filter by

Filtered by

PositiveClear filter

10,630 total ratings, 126 with reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From other countries

Johnnygoyk

Flashes of brilliance.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 September 2021

Verified Purchase

An intimate look into the lives of two women trying to contain their sanity within the bounds of their fierce intelligence . I wish I knew and loved these women. I hated the male characters (maybe I was jealous!) The women demean themselves by contacting them. I would have much preferred this book to be a straight correspondence between the two lead characters. I found myself skipping to these (much more interesting ) chapters.

One person found this helpful

Jane Napier

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 November 2021

Verified Purchase

I had been waiting for this book with such excitement and it is a beautiful thing to hold in your hands.

I was disappointed because I felt the ending was trite. Sally Rooney is intellectually so rigorous so I felt that the ending let the book down. I think I may be in a minority though, as I know a lot of people were delighted with the ending. I will read anything she ever writes though!

One person found this helpful

Lady Muck

Beautiful Reviews, Where Are You?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 November 2021

Verified Purchase

Baffled by the large number of people dropping a 1-star review, calling the book ‘drivel’ or similar, and awaiting their pat on the head for being so iconoclastic as to not like Sally Rooney. Join the enormous queue!

She writes with a cold tone/flattened affect that means you’re not welcomed in to the story, and no one’s tugging your heartstrings. Get over that, and there’s so much to value here, not least plenty of space to supplement the narrative with your own reflections, because you’re not being hit over the head with incidental details or with plot. Rooney’s taken some of the markers of adulthood – job, house, relationships, religious or spiritual life – and seen how they play out across four characters in different circumstances. Felix’s job in an Amazon-like warehouse is the most conspicuous critique of contemporary precarious work, particularly as it affects the body. But Alice’s nominally privileged life as a successful writer leaves her anxious and empty, while Eileen’s job has cultural cachet but sees her clinging to the edges of creativity, rather than taking part. Simon’s work has charitable and political connections, so he’s aced the ‘doing something purposeful’ task, but he doesn’t feel he’s achieved enough, while his father thinks he’s trying too hard and essentially accuses him of a Jesus complex. Domestic spaces are significant too – via renting, Alice has hopped into a family home like a cuckoo in the nest; Simon’s flat is bleakly simple, no different to the hotels he’s obliged to stay in whilst working; Eileen simply retreats to her bed for a cry after the end of her working day, and ‘dwells’ in online rather than physical spaces. The leftist critique of work and property that Eileen and Alice play with in their letters to one another offers no real help with all this; they hold any insights from social and political theory at an ironic distance. There’s nothing that’s going to ‘fix’ the way that modern life feels for a generation long out of university yet still adrift, but can’t help but hang on to the shape of hope.

Navigating all this – the fundamental purposeless of any human life – could have led to a didactic novel, or one concerned with redemption. Instead, Rooney is brave in letting her characters be ill-sketched, rather than really pinning them to the page. Felix’s past, in which debt and violence are implied, isn’t fully explored. Eileen and Alice’s difficult family relationships are touched on only in order to establish their reliance on one another’s friendship. Simon is a brilliant invention – a morally good, spiritually committed, handsome, kind man who is still somehow consistently unhappy with himself, and intermittently unattainable to Eileen. He could’ve been sickly and one-dimensional, but the complexities of his apparently successful life come through so strongly, he won me over to the point of a thumping crush. He seemed to owe a little to Evelyn Waugh’s Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited (but with additional work obligations).

I like Rooney’s use of space in the novel very much – other than towards or away from the sea, the geography of the story stays within the orbits of characters, primarily interested in how close they are to one another, or how they reach one another, rather than in scene-setting. The story moves into digital spaces in preference to lengthy details of interiors or vistas, except in the kitchen dinners when all four characters are finally united; rare scenes of community toward which the novel has been working. The movement of the narrative, in which a sensing presence that both is and isn’t the reader moves after the characters, and is sometimes stopped by a closed door or a blocked view, is really cleverly done. It’s not my favourite novel of the year, and Rooney’s not a beloved author of mine, but you can’t say she hasn’t achieved something here; something which has a different approach and sensibility to other contemporary writers. I’ll ignore the grumblers and look forward to all her future work.

Rosalind Anne Whitmore

Beautiful book I know where you are.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 October 2021

Verified Purchase

I greatly enjoyed this book and although Sally Rooney dished up the same middle class people discussing their lives and feelings about the world; I liked the emails between the two thoughtful girls, They're occasionally trite but for for most deep and thoughtful and funny. I find the moment when the working class man, chosen on the dating site Tinder, by the rich writer, sings an Irish song to the two girls at a family gathering, touching. What is it? I think it is the fact that he too has a talent and a depth to him and Sally Rooney writes about the beauty of the sad song silencing the room, I like the end too. Even when reading a serious novel. I'm sure that they hunger for a good ending. Didn't we all want poor Fanny to bag the rich and really decent eldest son I'n Jane Austen's Mansfield Park in the end?

One person found this helpful

Andrew Gillespie

Brilliant although different to previous novels

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 October 2021

Verified Purchase

I loved the first two novels and really looked forward to her third.
Really liked this one but for different reasons.
It is different. On the positive the email exchanges between the two female main characters managed to take me to a deeper intellectual and emotionally intense place that I have never experienced in any other novel.

Unfortunately for whatever reason I ended up not caring about the main characters as much as I did in the first two novels but perhaps it was because she had set such a high bar?

I also couldn’t help being distracted on Alice’s possible similarities with the author … I’ve since read an interview (Irish Times) and I think this has happened to quite a few readers.

Anyway - loved it, recommended.

One person found this helpful

Myfka1984

A must read!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 September 2021

Verified Purchase

Th reason I love Sally Rooney is because she speaks to me through her work, her books relate with people so much. I love how sometimes her books are confusing and also warm my heart all at once. You can not fall in love with certain characters, each of them you love for so many different reasons. Her books are smart, witty, they make you think. The sentences are long but brilliantly constructed. Definitely a must read!

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Beautifully thoughtful if a little meandering

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 September 2021

Verified Purchase

I highlighted so many passages in this that really spoke to me and I warmed to the characters as the book went on, despite finding them a bit unrealistic. I'm trying to read this without thinking of Rooney's previous work but I think there was a lack of plot comparatively so 3 1/2 stars overall.

One person found this helpful

John Fisher

To show support for BDS

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 October 2021

Verified Purchase

To show support for BDS and Sally's ethical stance, I bought a novel.
Into chapter 6 and I've still got no sense what (if any) the story line is. As a 71 years male I guess I'm not in the intended demographic!

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Character driven

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 January 2022

Verified Purchase

Each three dimensional character fits the others like a mis matching jigsaw.

I found the philosophical letters between the characters difficult to read but enjoyed the friendships, relationships and detail of the human condition Sally brings to her writing.

A must read for fans of Normal People .

Traveller

Magnificent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 September 2021

Verified Purchase

I cannot understand why this novel was overlooked for the Booker. Rooney is a sharp observer of emotions and human conflict and she is a very accessible writer. I think this is an exceptional novel. Her best yet.

One person found this helpful

Need customer service? Click here

‹ See all details for Beautiful World, Where Are You

5 star		26%
4 star		33%
3 star		27%
2 star		11%
1 star		4%

Beautiful World, Where Are You › Customer reviews

Customer reviews

Beautiful World, Where Are You

Top positive review

Top critical review

Filtered by

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From other countries

Beautiful World, Where Are You

›

Customer reviews