Beautiful World, Where Are You

Are Alice and Eileen two distinct people? Are they two possible lives for one person? Do their emails read like they’re written by two different personalities?

Back to question one; let me rephrase. The New York Times, with admirable confidence, declares “Alice Kelleher [is] a clear stand-in for the author.” Are you as sure as The New York Times?

 In Beautiful World itself, Alice says: “what is the relationship of the famous author to their famous books anyway?…And what do the books gain by being attached to me, my face, my mannerisms…Nothing.” What do you think relating a book to an author’s life, or an author’s face does? Why is it tempting, or profitable, to establish that relationship? (Since Alice, or Rooney’s, book tours and interviews might suggest that it is)

When you read a novel, you’ll notice its pacing: whether it seems to go by fast or slow. Pacing can be a function of many things, like how interested you are. If you don’t care about any of the characters, you’d probably rather spend five hours at the dentist than reading a particular novel, because they’d go by faster and less invasively. 

But pacing is also about form: how a novel is arranged; how it chooses to present its story. For instance, Rooney chooses to interrupt the narrative of Beautiful World every other chapter with emails between Alice and Eileen. 

 Some of us may not have been totally on board with this choice.

 Before we get into the correspondence itself, let’s ask: Does interrupting the forward progress of Beautiful World seem to slow it down? Is this a novel you read to get to the end?

But now back to the emails. Have any of us ever had an exchange like this? Are your friendships animated or deadened by talking about ideas? About crises beyond your personal lives? Do Alice and Eileen seem needlessly pessimistic?

 Let’s ask another question about friendship. Alice ends an email to Eileen: “Humanity on the cusp of extinction, here I am writing another email about sex and friendship. What else is there to live for?” 
 Did you feel that the scope of this book was limited? Are you yourself guilty you chose to read it over the news, say, or something non-fiction? Were the ways it tried to bring in outside issues satisfying to you?

Speaking of satisfaction, Rooney always seems to be writing about Irish twenty-somethings sleeping with each other. Does sex seem fun in Beautiful World? How does the intimacy between Alice and Felix, and between Eileen and Simon, compare to the women’s intimacy with each other? In their emails, for instance?

Every character in Beautiful World is good at rationalizations: at analyzing and explaining their emotions. Do you think this leads them to real closeness, or substitutes for really being honest with each other?

Alice mentions that she has put a “gulf of sophistication” between herself and her parents, one she looks back across with “relief.” Does your taste separate you from your parents? Did you do that deliberately?

Rooney’s earlier novels seem more rooted in Dublin, and its surrounding areas, than Beautiful World. If you’re an American reader, do you miss that attention to local features? Do you read Rooney to learn about Ireland?

Oscar Wilde, another great Irish understatement master, wrote that “All art is quite useless.” He meant that it doesn’t need to teach you anything. Reading a book isn’t self-improvement in the same way as going to the gym, or earning a degree at school. 

 You’re in a book club: do you agree?