Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Make it stand out
Beautiful World, Where Are You?
-Salley Rooney
“Or even a sense that while you used to be in step with the cultural discourse, you’re not anymore, and you feel yourself adrift from the world of ideas, alienated, with no intellectual home? Maybe it is about our specific historical moment, or maybe it’s just about getting older and disillusioned, and it happens to everyone.”
Describe in one line:
A book that reads like a journal you wish you had written or sit down to everyday before you get distracted with Netflix and social media.
My thoughts and lots of feelings:
I liked Rooney’s previous book, ‘Normal People’ but I didn’t love it like I love this book. This book is brutal, honest, millennial and very relatable in the least shallow way possible. There is an ease in this book, the way it is written, watch out for the unique lack of punctuation! The characters are intense but not loud. There is no simple plot, just a glimpse into the lives of four people at a certain point in their lives. Be patient when you start reading, it can get a bit slow but once it picks up pace, it’s worth the wait.
Love the book for:
I love the book for its social commentary and Rooney’s ability to perform that without patronizing the reader. The characters worry about what you and I would worry about, in this world and its multiple realities; loneliness, lack of financial stability, loving someone without being hurt and, loving someone without worrying about loss. The characters discuss what being working class mean, something we don’t come across often-our inability to comprehend the political extremism, the absence of common sense, and most of all, being lost in this chaos and not being to do the right thing. ‘Normal people’ was distressingly real, and this book is cheerfully honest unlike the brutality we usually expect with it.
Favorite quote:
(There are many mini rants in the book that I absolutely LOVE and can’t choose from but here’s a part of one of the many)
“I know we agree that civilization is presently in its decadent declining phase, and that lurid ugliness is the predominant visual feature of modern life.”
“Everyone is at once hysterically attached to particular identity categories and completely unwilling to articulate what those categories consist of, how they came about, and what purposes they serve.”
