TW: alcohol, mentions of suicide and mental breakdown, semi-graphic sex scenes, death of parent

I understand the hype around Sally Rooney, but I am also starting to think that I am no longer her target audience, and as a result unable to fully connect with her characters. Beautiful World, Where Are You is more mature than her previous work Normal People (I have not read Conversations with Friends), but also tougher to get through. I am fully convinced that someone who read the entire book in one sitting will have a different opinion on the book than someone, who, like me, read it in chunks. Rooney's writing style, is remarkably detached this time around, can turn hypnotic when you give it a chance, but also slogs from time to time - the beginning and end were slow for me, while I breezed through the middle, hungry for more.

None of the characters are really likeable, but they are relatable - I'm sure I'm not the only one who saw themselves mirrored in Eileen, who is stuck in a will-they-won't-they situation - all, except Alice. I did not understand her and Felix' dynamic one bit, because, to me, both seemed ill-tempered and snarky to a degree I would find unbearable in real life. Furthermore I found the emails, which are sent after every "in-person" scene, to be pretentious and unnatural, on top of being a heavy-handed method of characterizing Eileen and Alice. Mind you, I think I would have enjoyed these letters more if Rooney had amped up the character's egos a bit more - these discussions on beauty and society have their place, but perhaps rather at 2am, wine drunk, than in an email where you also mentioned the man you've been sleeping with. I would love to read a "pretentious academics hang out in Rome, get winedrunk, philosophize and then ruining their intermingling relationships as a result" book by Rooney, honestly. This just felt like she wanted to write essays or blog entries on more philosophical topics and ended up jamming these thoughts into her book on imperfect people trying to find a world worth living in. By the final third of the book I was tired of reading it, no longer interested in what the characters were doing and who they ended up with. In my review of Normal People, I wrote "Were this book longer or differently paced, I would have been furious at them both. But given the short timeframe of the plot and how easy this book read, I didn't really mind it.", which perfectly sums up my issues with this book. Rooney tried to add in too many ideas, ultimately clogging up her writing and the pacing of the story. I love how she writes interactions and relationships, and I guess without the emails we would have had More Normal People, but would that be such a bad thing? I don't know.

I'll give her next book a go, for sure, but have to come to terms with the fact that she may not ever wow me in the meantime.