Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Alice Kelleher is a wildly successful Irish novelist who, in the wake of a nervous breakdown, has rented an isolated, 'chaotically huge' old rectory three hours from Dublin on the outskirts of a coastal town where she knows no one.

In addition, there are Rooney's now-famous sex scenes, among the most lushly moving you'll find in contemporary literary fiction.īeautiful World focuses on four characters - the two best friends and the two men with whom they test tentative new romantic relationships.

Her unembellished prose is rich in conversations that are at once plaintive and wry, soul-baring and deflective. In addition, there are Rooney's now-famous sex scenes, among the most lushly moving you'll find in contemporary literary fiction. But so is the straightforward sincerity with which she writes about class issues, mental health, and see-saw relationships. Like Smith, Rooney looks hard for beauty and - reassuringly - manages to find it. It's also a question that, in various permutations, has come to drive more and more contemporary fiction, including Jenny Offill's Weather and Ali Smith's recent seasonal quartet of up-to-the-minute novels. 'Beautiful world, where are you?' is a question her 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. Sally Rooney's third, exceptionally deft novel in five years takes its title from a line from a poem by Friedrich Schiller, which Schubert set to music in 1819.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney