So ‘Beautiful world, where are you?’ was my first Sally Rooney book and I finished it about 3 months ago. I adored it in so many ways. I loved the characters and seeing how they struggled in a world that is more or less doomed by the climate crisis, I loved how they struggled in their relationships and their way of communicating with each other. I heavily related to Alice’s problems in opening up and seeming cold to others. As well as Eileen’s paragraph where she is talking about how she used to find happiness in very mundane things but somehow lost the ability to do that, as well as her fear that she is standing in the way of her own happiness, because she pities herself too much and every time something good happens to her, she questions how long it will last. Sometimes the emails or the way the characters were thinking was like I was reading my own thoughts and it was so cathartic.
For me this book was a very easy 5 stars and the book kept coming back into my mind. So I wanted to see what other people think of it, but looking through reddit, the only threads I found were from people who did not like the book for various reasons and it made me kind of sad. I completely understand that some people may not like the lack of plot, or how the characters are bad at communicating with each other, but on the other hand I found that it was just a very realistic depiction of life. A lot of people say the characters are unlikable, but I found that they were just flawed in a very believable and human way. Is that just a reddit thing that people disliked this book so much? Honestly, seeing so many people say the characters are not likable makes me feel kind of weird, since I relate to them so much. What do you guys think about this?
by DaFranzi