Book Review: Salley Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You
If you have friendships that have lasted a good ten years or more, you would know what it is like to struggle to let someone’s blood become a part of yours just by breathing in the same air as them, and living life as a memory conjoined. It is not easy. Add to that more than a few people who have lived a life like this, you would know what it is like to be told by an outsider who you – and your friends – are. It doesn’t feel nice. I often find myself worrying if my wife-to-be will like my friends. I then think of all the possibilities of how it could go wrong. It takes a lot to take myself from the spiral of this anxiety, and then I find myself telling myself that when the time comes, I shall find out then.
In Sally Rooney’s book “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” I found myself questioning my life, and most importantly my friendships. I didn’t find myself questioning them in the way that makes me doubt them, but more in a way that are my friendships really how I remember them to be in this moment. When an outsider – Felix – enters into the world where Alice has become a famous writer instead of her best friend Eileen, who is in love with their friend Simon, their friendships and their lives are tested. In a world where you see yourself through the eyes of others, I have always believed it best to be seen through the eyes of your friends. Friends love you in a way that makes it easy to see your self softly, whereas if you see yourself through the eyes of your parents, it makes it a bit difficult to like yourself because like and love are two different things, and to be liked by parents is a privilege acquired by a few – something this book explores. And to see yourself through the eyes of strangers? I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re a people pleaser.
Yet no one can hate you like a friend does, and when that hate is fresh and boiling, it can be the tipping point of a life you thought would only get better from there on. For those of us who have loved and lived long enough to have sustainable friendships with people so separate from us yet so similar, would understand what it takes to not let a bond so humiliatingly sacred break. Humiliating because outsiders cannot even fathom what we can. Friends evolve together but to someone like Felix, it is easy to judge such connections and find flaws and not just find them actively, but point them out. Felix is not an easy character to like for the very same reasons. But what makes Felix redeem his standing in this book is that he questions the existence of Eileen and Simon in Alice’s life not for the sake of moral superiority, but to understand and love Alice better. It is easy to dismiss a supposedly loser’s regard that makes you question the integrity of a friendship by labeling him as a dunce, and how he wouldn’t know any better. But here’s the thing, it is only those who have hit rock bottom know where the integrity of a relationship lies. And Felix is just trying to understand that because that’s where he sees himself and Alice; at rock bottom.
Trying to understand why Alice – a famous writer – claims to have friends but those friends never visit her. Alice and Eileen talk a lot over email, but Felix doesn’t see anything past that. Relationships and their intricacies are what Salley Rooney is best at describing. I have always loved her works because they describe something so sacred and holy – friendships. An almost inexplicable experience and so unique to the individual that to write it in a mass-produced work of art that people can access can be daunting. Something almost as complex as the characters she gives life to through her words, yet she manages to succeed in just that.
By the end of the book, especially the scene where Alice and Eileen fight and how the fight resolved, I found myself. I saw myself, I understood parts of myself, and a few pieces of the puzzle of my mind came together to fit. I am at that point in my life where I am not looking for escape through fiction. I am present, and I am willing to understand my part in this world a bit better, that is why I read. Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You is a book that gives me just that; a reason to not worry that my wife will not like my friends. She just might end up making me a better friend. Ameen.