Sally Rooney’s 2021 novel Beautiful World, Where Are You is an articulate investigation of emotion as it relates to the phenomenon of self. Drawing on personalized experiences to create literary persons, Rooney’s continuous ability to convey depth through a thought-provoking narrative is uncontested.  

If you couldn’t tell, I’m a fan. Rooney’s literary voice is not exactly what I would classify as clear, but with a slight investigation is, by most accounts, a valid perspective. Beautiful World, Where Are You is a story which highlights the complexities of the contemporary world. Drawing on political issues, power relations, gender, and the controversies of class, Rooney portrays intimate conversations between friends. Luring the audience in with personalized communication and the feeling that the unfolding plot is new to both the audience and the writer, creates an enticing ambience. 

The story begins with a woman named Alice as she sits in a bar awaiting Felix, a man she met online. Their date was considered nothing short of an atrociously awkward experience; yet still, it possesses the underlying sense of a silver lining. Begging the question of the importance of working to make a relationship early in the text, Rooney’s metaphorical parallels between coupled characters are uncanny.  

After Alice’s experience with Felix, we see the quick transition to an email conversation. Becoming a consistent trend throughout the novel, these emails are fuelled with slights, digressions and personal thought. Conversing at length with her long-time friend Eileen, whom we will soon meet in Dublin, Alice speaks on issues of democracy, capitalism and social concerns across an expansive spectrum. Eileen is an embodiment of restlessness. Irritated with work and family, while continually stalking her ex-boyfriend on social media, Eileen eventually returns to a longstanding flirtation with her childhood friend, Simon. 

While reading, the audience is in one of three places, with Alice and Felix, Eileen and Simon, or getting a front-row seat to Alice and Eileen’s email chain. Viewed as an absurdity to many, Beautiful World Where Are You may be considered categorically plotless in the way that it encompasses mundane activities and simplistic conversations between friends. The reader is subjected to endless banter of social structures, gender, and class. Still, a distinct intimacy is conveyed in the melancholy tone of the writing. 

This is a theme that is emphasized in Eileen’s first email response with the not-so-subtle comment that “Maybe certain kinds of pain, at certain formative stages in life, just impress themselves into a person’s sense of self permanently.” Throughout the novel, it becomes clear that the introspective wording which guides the characters' investigation of their relationships, work, and philosophy through their late twenties to early thirties operates as representation of notions held by many in society. 

As she continually accentuates the contrast between the characters, Rooney emphasizes the social disparities between Alice’s staggeringly successful writing career and Felix’s discontent with the mundane nature of his warehouse job. Each “couple” appears to represent correlating narratives of social stratification which often appear in our contemporary society. Eileen and Simon discuss the complex nature of gender roles, essentially begging the question of why men over thirty feel a compulsory need to enjoy the company of their younger counterparts. 

While it may be argued that Rooney’s characters impersonate a lack of motivation focussing too much on romantic relationships rather than individual character development, it should also be noted that these relationships express a realistic timeline of growth. Instead of a singular solution to personal struggles, we see the reliance on those around us to guide and shape development. 

Despite its chronological narrative structure and understated subject matter, Beautiful World Where Are You is not a straightforward novel. I feel as though I experienced the book how the author intended and I find it much easier to fall into the literature than to explain its complexities. Its philosophical nature cultivates a certain aesthetic which is not easily comparable to much else I have read. When it is all said and done, we are presented with Eileen’s final message; doing what was never truly expected of her but implying the inevitable nature of life, she states: “And I want that - to prove that the most ordinary thing about human beings is not violence or greed but love and care.”