Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where are You? is a novel that actually contains two separate and distinct storylines in which only one genuinely makes for compulsive reading. And that is not a reference to the twin love stories of Alice and Felix and Eileen and Simon. While the love affairs of the two central female protagonists can effectively be described as the meat of the narrative, this is a novel that is actually split down the middle in a completely different manner. It is really a book that pits Felix and Simon against Alice and Eileen in a battle of wits and interesting things to say. Frankly, it’s a first-round knockout for the gals.
Here’s the thing about this novel that is basically about just four people. Two of those people are really incredibly uninteresting human beings. Pick any scene at random which features the two romantic couples interacting and then place it in juxtaposition to any of the email exchanges between the two women also picked at random. In fact, let’s do just that:
Felix finished his shift at seven in the evening, while Alice was cooking. On his way out of the warehouse, he texted her.
Felix: Hey sorry but im actually not gonna be there for dinner Felix: Heading out w people from work
Felix: I wouldnt be any fun anyways bc im in foul humor Felix: Might see u tomorrow depending on how wrecked I get Alice: oh
Alice: I’ll be sorry to miss you
Now compare that typical level of discourse between Alice and Felix with this randomly selected extract from one of the many email discussions which take place between Alice and Eileen:
“Alice, do you remember a few weeks or months ago I sent you an email about the Late Bronze Age collapse? I went on reading about it afterwards, and it seems that while little is known about the period, scholarly interpretations are more various than the Wikipedia page led me to believe. We do know that before the collapse, rich and literate palace economies in the Eastern Mediterranean traded in exorbitantly costly goods, apparently sending and receiving them as gifts to and from the rulers of other kingdoms.”
See the problem here? Four characters, two explicit romantic heterosexual relationships, and one explicitly platonic deep abiding friendship based on respect between two women. The problem for those still not seeing it is this: why are Felix and Simon even in this novel? Sally Rooney very quickly attained a reputation after publishing just two novels for being at the front line of the millennialist vanguard in literary fiction. Maybe she was just cowed by the fact that the title of the debut novel which sparked her success was Conversations with Friends, but whatever the reason behind it, she relentlessly avoided the obvious in this third book: do away with the romance and make the entire book about the email conversation between two friends.
A golden opportunity missed, but it is not too late. Both Alice and Eileen are very much interesting enough for a future novel which checks back in on them after having both jettisoned the guys undeserving of their romantic impulses. Rooney could tell that story through what communications medium has developed by then to make email and texts obsolete. Hopefully, she won’t give in to the fear or pressure to be commercial or whatever it was that somehow convinced her that the parts of this book which are not presented as email exchanges between two fascinating women were as worthy of interest.
