Beautiful World, Where Are You

An incisive and affecting dissection of the lives and loves of a quartet of young friends in Dublin and the west of Ireland, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young - but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They worry about sex and friendship and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Review

A tour de force. The dialogue never falters, and the prose burns up the page. -- Anne Enright ― Guardian

Rooney's strongest writing thus far . . . There is a touching honesty and truthfulness in these pages, along with a quiet brilliance. -- Diana Evans ― Financial Times

The book moved me to tears more than once . . . Rooney's best novel. -- James Marriott ― The Times

Written with immense skill and illuminated by an endlessly incisive intelligence. -- Fintan O’Toole ― Irish Times

Beautiful World, Where Are You is not just worth reading. It's worth thinking about. ― Irish Independent

Brilliantly done: gripping, steamy, unbearably sad.

― Telegraph

Beautiful, serious and excoriating about contemporary society -- Susie Goldsbrough and Robbie Millen ― Times

About the Author

Sally Rooney is an Irish novelist. She is the author of Conversations with Friends, Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You.