Somewhat to my husband's frustration, I do love an absorbing story and over the last couple of month's I've been particularly enjoying Sally Rooney's latest novel.
As per the Guardian "love-quadrangle review", there are four principal characters in this novel, i.e. all with strong voices and significant character development, but the primary narrator is Alice, a hugely popular but discontented writer, struggling with her new rock/writer-star celebrity status.
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney review – author of her own discontent
… a love-quadrangle storyline à la Conversations With Friends. Eileen, employed by a Dublin literary magazine, beds her girlhood crush, Simon, a political adviser; Alice, now living by the sea in Mayo, falls for her Tinder hookup, Felix, a warehouse worker. Their relationship crackles with the flinty repartee that is the shining currency of all Rooney’s fiction.
This was my first Sally Rooney, people have been telling me for a while I should be reading her and so I was happy when she was chosen for the book club at work. One of the epithets the author doesn't like is as a millennial writer, or more precisely, she is being dubbed the first great millennial writer by some?
My younger colleagues saw her as writing for millennial's. However, they focused on the details of being in their late 20s or early 30s and living in an expensive, metropolitan hub city like Dublin or Amsterdam. And yes, there are many parallels for young professionals living in these two cities; the conversation even briefly drifted onto New York with the revamping of Sex and the City?
However, I suspect the epithet "millennial writer" annoys Sally Rooney because yes there is something in the fresh rebellious tone of her writing and this epithet can be seen as somewhat patronizing. The book is packed with both exciting people and exciting ideas, especially the defence of socialism and complacency of those who see the last 50 years as a vindication that the "right-wing thinking has been proved right" plus the "left-wing think is a bit simple and naive"? While I hope no one would try to defend the old USSR, I like that she is pushing back against "end of history":
“Human beings lost that when the Berlin Wall came down. I’m not going to get into another argument with you about the Soviet Union, but when it died so did history. I think of the twentieth century as one long question, and in the end we got the answer wrong. Aren’t we unfortunate babies to be born when the world ended? After that there was no chance for the planet, and no chance for us.”
— Beautiful World, Where Are You
I think the visionary Jeannette Winterson with her "superior arguments of socialism" would approve of Sally Rooney's perspective and push-back against the triumph of naked capitalism:
“It was a real advance in human consciousness towards collective responsibility; an understanding that we owed something not only to our flag or to our country, to our children or our families, but to each other. Society. Civilisation. Culture.
That advance in consciousness did not come out of Victorian values or philanthropy, nor did it emerge from right-wing politics; it came out of the practical lessons of the war, and–and this matters–the superior arguments of socialism.
Britain’s economic slow-down in the 1970s, our IMF bail-out, rocketing oil prices, Nixon’s decision to float the dollar, unruly union disputes, and a kind of existential doubt on the Left, allowed the Reagan/ Thatcher 1980s Right to skittle away annoying arguments about a fair and equal society.”
— Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
But putting politics aside, my favourite character was Simon, quiet, elegant, peacefully getting on with his life. I perceive him as a role model, of those many "gently religious" folk, who have the self-discipline to keep their faith, find the good and relevant in their religious convictions without getting drawn into extremist and/or intolerant positions?
I was chatting with a couple of friends after Church last month and mentioned that I was reading this great new novel: final there was with a strong Christian character who is not a complete idiot. My two friends, who are probably a bit more orthodox than myself were a bit shocked but also amused (I hope). Simon is likeable, relatable, handsome and possibly the nicest character in the novel. He is also the perfect counterbalance to his neurotic girlfriend Eileen. There are two strong romances in this novel: while Alice and Felix bump along and slowly fall in love, with a modicum of bickering; Eileen is more intensely besotted with Simon and in one memorable scene they have the best phone sex ever. Well, it is the best phone sex scene I've ever read and I can't help musing that only an accomplished author could have phone sex with such elegant dialog? I will not quote any of this, partly as it is the romantic context and build up which makes this scene so perfect.
I will leave you one last quote, demonstrating the quixotic humour and eye for quirky details, which made this book so a joy to read, Alice is writing to Eileen (this is largely an epistolary novel):
“I miss you. I was sitting in the Musée d’Orsay this morning looking at sweet little Marcel Proust’s portrait, and wishing John Singer Sargent had painted him instead. He’s quite ugly in the painting, but despite this unfortunate fact (and I do mean despite!) something in his eyes reminded me of you. Probably just the glow of brilliance.”
— Beautiful World, Where Are You
2 an inhabitant of a metropolis: a sophisticated metropolitan.
