"Were they somehow invulnerable to, untouched by, vulgarity and ugliness, glancing for a moment into something deeper, something concealed beneath the surface of life, not unreality but a hidden reality: the presence at all times, in all places, of a beautiful world?"
I know that when it comes to Sally Rooney's novels there's nothing new you can say, even less if it's good, but even so I want to try and write my personal thoughts on this book, because when I read Normal People I wasn't able to even talk about it. I didn't and still don't know if I loved it or hated it – probably the first – so I didn't even try to write a review, because it made me feel so many things I still don't know how to put them into words and organized enough for all of you to understand. But I feel confident and brave enough to write a review on Beautiful World, Where Are You, because of course it's good, I mean, it's Sally Rooney, but there's something different from Normal People, and is the fact that you know what the characters think and feel. Let me explain.
In Beautiful World, Where Are You, through Alice and Eileen's emails you can know how and what they feel, think and go through things at each moment of their lives, which you don't in Normal People, though they write emails too but their less substantial, and definitely less deep and thought than the ones in Beautiful World. Here you know what happens exactly inside the characters' minds, because they're completely honest with one another, which is amazing and not seen in any of Rooney's novels since Conversations With Friends, where the one talking is the main character. But that fact doesn't mean that you empathize more or less that with Marianne and Connell, since I felt really close to Marianne's feelings even though sometimes the novel doesn't explain what she truly feels. But I also felt close to Eileen and her fear of everything, from how the world and humanity are slowly decaying to her fear of ending up alone in life, but still knowing how to be alone just in case that's her destiny.
"We spend our lives (...) trying to love other people instead of hating them, and there is nothing else that matters on the earth."
Now, what I felt every now and then reading this book is that this is the result of the two sides of Sally Rooney talking to each other: the famous published author and the frustrated uninspired one. But, as the novel says at some point, it's also a result of Rooney trying to demonstrate that you can write a book about nothing – nothing being normal life and regular people – and still become a best-seller. I honestly don't know if this book is a best seller, and if it is then is it because it's good or just because it's a Sally Rooney novel? Anyway, I think that sometimes she fails in this example by including some attitudes between the characters that, from my point of view, wouldn't actually work in real life. For example the trust and reliance between the two female characters, how they're completely open and honest about everything and then when it comes to their relationship problems they don't know how to face them. Or the way Felix treats Alice at some point, me if I would have been her I would have kicked his ass, to be honest. But yes, there's all kinds of people in the world, and maybe there are people who would have acted exactly like that. So I guess Sally Rooney is right and she has written a best-selling book about normal lives. Maybe this is the book that should be titled Normal People. Who knows.
"What would it be like to form a relationship with no preordained shape of any kind? Just to pour the water out and let it fall. I suppose it would take no shape, and run off in all directions."
As always, thanks for reading me.
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