On Ireland's west coast, Alice (novelist) and Felix (warehouse worker) meet on a tinder date. Both are about 30. She comes from Dublin but had lived in New York. She invites him home. He goes there then leaves without the relationship progressing. When Alice was 24 she got £250k in a US book deal. Alice wasn't popular at school - critical, and not beautiful. She had a breakdown - that's why she's moved to the West coast. He had a bit of a breakdown when his mother died the year before, and lost his job. When he was a schoolboy he got a schoolgirl pregnant. Felix says he's bisexual. Alice is too - if she likes someone she wants to sleep with them whatever their gender. They're both relaxed about it. She fancies him. He's a considerate person/lover. They seem to enjoy chatting - which is rather a surprise given his education.
Eileen meets a man she knows at lunch time. They are both about 30. She met Alice as a student at Dublin university and lived together. She'd known Simon, who has an Oxford degree in philosphy, since before then. They were neighbours and Simon recalls Eileen as a newborn. Eileen had been with Aiden for 3 years when Alice returns to Dublin to go into a psychiatric hospital. She splits with Aiden. She writes to Alice about politics and missing Aiden. Eileen earns 20k working in a literary magazine. Simon's religious, a politics consultant. His girlfriends are some years younger than her. Eileen and Simon are both beautiful.
I liked chapter 7 - phone sex where Eileen role-plays being Simon's wife.
Alice goes to Rome for a book show. She invites him, having only met him once, not too successfully. He goes with her. She sees representations of herself in articles about her. Some drain her, some she doesn't recognise. She's written nothing for 2 years.
Eileen's interested in capitalism/Marxism, why civilisations collapse. Linear B (a language whose meaning is rediscovered) is presented as an analogy. They think about definitions of "working class". Eileen wonders how an atheist like her should respond to people like Simon who believes. She wouldn't normally respect someone who believes in something cranky and irrational.
The 2 couples spend time together in Alice's big house. Felix and Simon get on ok. Felix wonders about having a threesome with Simon. Felix takes them to a party where his brother and friends are. Felix has a good singing voice. He's 5' 8" and can't read that well. Simon is 6' 3" and sang at college. After he and Eileen have sex, Simon gives up his girlfriend. But then Eileen says she'd rather be his life-long friend than a lover who might later be rejected. Eileen gets angry with Alice - they'd started an e-mail dialogue when Alice was in New York. When she returned to Dublin she didn't tell Eileen for a while, but continued the emailing. Simon suggests that Eileen chooses people as friends who don't fight for love then challenges them to fight for her. 18 months later the 2 couples are still together. Eileen is pregnant, and wonders whether having a baby is politically sound.
The degree of interiority changes from section to section. There are monologues (email), there are scenes where the PoV is camera-like. There's texting and dialogue. Several passages mix direct and reported speech.
All the characters are cautious about showing their depth of interest. "I don't mind" can mean "Yes please" or "No way". It's unclear why the Felix character is said to be bi-sexual, why he owes money, and why he's rather uneducated. Perhaps the orientation and education are what fragile Eileen needs in a partner.
Some of the phrasing looks rather lax -
- "Nodding to himself", "Smiling to himself"
- "She nodded her head"
- "In a low voice Simon murmured"
Other reviews
- Anne Enright (This is prose you either get or don’t get; for some it is incisive, for others banal ... The last third of Beautiful World, Where Are You, when the four characters meet and connect, is a tour de force. ... When a fictional writer opines that writers’ opinions should not matter, the real writer is either having her cake and eating it, or enacting the paradoxes her character so derides.)
- goodreads
- Caleb Crain (the leftism of Rooney’s characters is shallow, and that their worldview is to a great extent undermined by the novels’ plots. ... Submissive impulses, homemade Christianity, and an ethos of mutual care return in her new novel ... Rooney claims Felix is bisexual, a claim that goes largely unsubstantiated, and makes his outlines even blurrier. ... Chasing her ideas about love, Rooney hasn’t sufficiently incarnated them. Unlike the wayward human beings of her earlier novels, the foursome in Beautiful World seems carefully planned and a little static, like figures in an allegory. Rooney’s efforts to introduce romantic suspense feel added on. I couldn’t manage to believe that Alice and Felix would ever make a couple except briefly and painfully, and I couldn’t see why Eileen and Simon weren’t settled lovers from Chapter 3 onward. ... There’s something a little 18th-century about Beautiful World, with its philosophical tone and its abstractly conceived characters who can’t stop talking about how to reconcile romantic liberty with love’s responsibilities.)
- Heller McAlpin (two main female characters, best friends from college now on the cusp of 30, grapple with repeatedly in their struggles to figure out how they should live and find meaning in a troubled world that has become increasingly unviable on multiple levels — ecologically, economically, ethically and emotionally.)
- Edward Heathman (The weakest section is arguably the very end, when the story spins itself into a pandemic narrative and one of the relationships is wrapped up in a near-sentimental Mills & Boon bow. The main disappointment is that the characters, who are meant to be thirtyish, have the emotional life of teenagers. Stylistically, however, Beautiful World, Where Are You? is flawless. Readers can hope that the semi-autobiographical elements in this novel have freed Rooney up imaginatively for her next fictional foray.)
No comments:
Post a Comment