Beautiful World Where Are You

I really loved this book! Rooney’s characters are always the woooorst kind of 20-somethings; I hate them AND I relate to them! They are annoying and pitiful and also aspirational!? They’re trying to figure things out, okay!! They’re fumbling through dating, friendships, career stuff, and family relationships. Thinking about identity and the way we present ourselves to the world is endlessly fascinating to me and I think that’s why I like her work so much.

I also just like reading her prose. Her spare descriptions of life get at its mundanity, but I still find there to be a fizziness to the narrative, especially in how funny it is! I loved the structure of BWWAY. I loved the way the characters’ actions overlapped, I loved the emails, I loved the questions of religion and meaning in the world.

One of my favorite things about BWWAY was the privacy Rooney gave her characters. There were so many gaps in the narrative where I was left to wonder what Alice or Eileen or Felix or Simon was thinking. They remained deeply enigmatic, even as they overshared in other ways.

I’ve been reading a lot of the Discourse™ around Rooney and this book and I think there’s a lot to be said about the impotence of the book (does a book need potence? I’m not sure …). For me the experience of reading it is expansive; it makes me think, and I see how others might not feel the same. If you like Rooney, I think you’ll like this one, though.