Sally Rooney, in her third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You?, follows three couples as they explore the nature of love and friendship in an atomized society. Eileen and Alice, college roommates in Dublin, are English majors whose lives rapidly diverged. Alice has written two wildly successful novels, eventually entering a psychiatric institution before debarking to a drafty abandoned rectory on the remote northwestern Irish coast. Eileen struggles with low ambition and several failed love affairs, remaining mired in a copy editor’s position at a minor literary journal. Their emails, interspersed between standard narrative sequences, range over issues puzzling many post-millennials. They discuss the wisdom of creating a family in a world roiled by conflict and climate change, comparing the collapse of ancient civilizations to our own times. Each wonders about the value of her life, and why neither has found a lasting love. They struggle to keep their own friendship intact as distance and circumstance pull them apart.
We meet Alice on her first date with Felix, a working class local in the small town near her hide-away. On the surface, Felix appears a poor match for Alice. A recovering addict, he works in a warehouse and asserts he would never read one of Alice’s books. Alice chastises him for his crass and judgmental personality, while he routinely calls her out for her coldness. Rooney shows them continually at odds, denying any potential emotional connection. Yet they persist in their tentative encounters. Alice invites Felix on a book tour she takes through Italy. It’s work for her, and an amusing first visit to the continent for him. From there, they begin to share their fears of close relationships, and start to create one of their own.
Rooney paints Eileen as better-looking, and possibly more curious and informed about the world than Alice, yet lacking in some essential motivation towards others and her own success. Early on, we learn of her childhood neighbor, Simon, five years older, who has lusted for her since her teens. Simon, however, is a classic straight-arrow, a devout Catholic and low-level political aide. When she was fifteen, Eileen shared with Simon her almost suicidal depression, and he provided a friendly shoulder to lean on. Five years on, when he lived in Paris with one of a succession of girlfriends, all increasingly younger than him, she impetuously goes to see him, and they spend the night in bed. She enters her own disappointing relationship with Aiden, only lightly sketched. When she realises that five years of her life was lost to him, she returns to Simon for another assignation. Neither seems capable of expressing their need for the other, and it appears they are doomed to remain friends without benefits.
Rooney, as in her previous novel, Normal People, takes these simple tales of tentative love and friendship, and explores the depths of human need and fulfillment. Her speculations on the nature of beauty, the foundations of human connection, and her sly takes on the lonely ironies of an electronically connected society provide sustenance for those craving an intelligent portrayal of people coping with their humanity.