Tournament of Books discussion

space to discuss 2022 TOB contender: Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney

Generally, I liked this - then again, I thought Normal People was fine too. Felt a lot more semi-autobiographical (as one of the characters was a famed author) and had a lot more musings-about-the-state-of-the-world.

I think she's a good writer, but I don't think this book is as essential as most of its press seems to suggest.

Sigh.

Like I said elsewhere, it could be worse -- we could have to read the Franzen.

Ellen wrote: "Sigh.

Like I said elsewhere, it could be worse -- we could have to read the Franzen."

I'm afraid I'm going to have to read the Franzen anyway. It's a trilogy so he'll continue to be in our face for a while.

The Franzen is, IMO, better.

But why, Janet? Why will you have to read it? Trilogy, Schmilogy.

  “You have some big fans out there on the internet, the man added.

  Yes, I believe so, she replied. Also a lot of people who hate me and wish me ill.”

Seems Sally reads the ToB comments. (Enjoying this book btw)

I’m just going to say that this book was terrible. Normal People was a thousand times better.

And the Franzen was MUCH better than Beautiful World, btw.

*much better than*

(Sorry)

Also a lot of people who hate me and wish me ill.

There's a pretty big gap between "think the book should have remained out after its first round tournament loss" or "definitely not the second best tournament book of the past 16 years, so thanks for nothing Jessa Crispin" and wishing her ill. But, obviously, "some people out there on the internet don't think my book was the best book of the year" isn't quite as dramatic and overwrought....

I don't wish her ill, but I am not enjoying the book very much. Why does she tell the reader every time a character locks their phone? What does it matter what anyone is wearing? It's basically about two couples and will they or won't they and I don't care what happens to any of them.

Ruthiella wrote: ". Why does she tell the reader every time a character locks their phone? What does it matter what anyone is wearing? It's basically abo..."

I was thrown off by this minituae too, but then I started to like really enjoy the descriptions of the characters, like I was spying on them and they didn't know it. It was this weird voyeuristic style of writing, like you were a fly on the wall and could look at what they were looking at on their phone, and just watch them so closely. It was pretty unsettling how much I enjoyed it. And I thought maybe Rooney was doing something with that, like making some kind of comment on voyeurism?

I thought this was easily Rooney's worst novel yet, I liked her other two much, much more. It was okay because she's a great writer, but the story itself was just not great, and the characters were almost laughably unlikeable at too many times.

It's a good point about emails though maybe they're just old enough to still do that. I can't get my 13-year old to check her email, she rolls her eyes as if I'm asking her to run down to the Post Office or find a carrier pigeon.

The emails though were absolutely the worst part of the book. Felt completely unreal. If this is how she actually communicates with her friends, YIKES

Juliana wrote: "Cat wrote: "I was thrown off by this minituae too,...And I thought maybe Rooney was doing something with that, like making some kind of comment on voyeurism?"

Interesting thought. I really didn't ..."

Yes I can see that! And I read Normal People pre-pandemic and thought I was going to go INSANE with her descriptions in that book. Maybe the pandemic has changed me, and I'm just so bored now from being a homeschooling stay-home mom for almost 2 years that I'll accept the repetitive descriptions and even come up with some reason why they're good. :D

Ruthiella wrote: "I don't wish her ill, but I am not enjoying the book very much. Why does she tell the reader every time a character locks their phone? What does it matter what anyone is wearing? It's basically abo..."

I also felt like everyone speaks in the same voice, which made separating out the two women so difficult. And I loved Normal People, just didn't get why she wrote this book. Got Conversations with Friends for Christmas though, maybe I'll like it more.

Conversations with Friends is not as great as Normal People but it's worlds above this one.

I was so disappointed in this book. Normal People is one of the best books I've read in the past few years; I loved it. I also liked Conversations with Friends although not as much. But both of them irritated me on a certain level and Beautiful World, Where Are You? seemed to contain all the bad parts of those without nearly as much as the good parts. Even the title made me roll my eyes.

I felt like both of these main female characters were bad people and bad friends and their male love interests weren't much better. And I couldn't even see their reason for being that way, whereas in her first two books there was so much more character development and back story to explain why they did such awful things to other people.

Their emails were the. worst. And I agree with most of the characters' politics but I hated the way they phrased it, like they were 18 year old college freshmen feeling so proud of themselves for their great big ideas and also so smug. I think that at least in her other books the characters were young- in high school, college and just out of college, but these characters were late 20s or early 30s I think and yet they sounded so naive and sophomoric. It read like the diary of people who were emotionally/intellectually stunted but thought they were so advanced. Almost like they both had narcissism. I couldn't find anything endearing about them really, and especially not the poor famous author who had to deal with having so much money but so little human connection because she herself pushed other people away- oh please.

At first I thought I was liking it or could like it but then it got so boring and kept getting worse and worse. I really struggled to finish it. Also some parts read like some kind of anti-feminist manifesto and I was like "Did Sally Rooney or an incel in his mom's basement write this?" even though it was the female characters who were talking. (About feeling old and not being wanted and their biological clocks expiring, etc.)

And then the epilogue/end was just horrible but I won't give spoilers in case you haven't finished it yet. Ugh. I think this book turned me off to Rooney for good and before I read it, I really liked her! :(

John wrote: "I’m just going to say that this book was terrible. Normal People was a thousand times better.

And the Franzen was MUCH better than Beautiful World, btw."

So much this. It's a weak self-involved work that started to irritate me from the missing question mark of the title all the way through to the tacked-on COVID coda.

Weak stuff after the sublime Normal People. I love seeing how many people in this thread are aligned with exactly how I felt about this book.

I did a full review of the book on my YT channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmCw5...

Daniel wrote: "the missing question mark of the title ..."

What is the deal w/ that?? Same thing w/ Where'd You Go, Bernadette. Do titles in the interrogative not have question marks?

I will continue to argue that Normal People was about as good as this. They were both perfectly fine.

I've already finished this novel and after Normal People I honestly disliked Sally Rooney finally convinced me. It wasn't the Great Novel but good read. Although I'm buffled by some characters and conversations between them, Felix in particular. He seemed the only open guy who tells it like it is but what about Alice "intimidating" people. Yea, she was problematic person but wasn't Felix accusations of intimidating everyone exaggerated?
I'm really curious about your thoughts on characters.

I’m with all of you who loved Normal People. That book was one of my favorites the year it came out. Conversations with Friends is a very distant second to Normal People, and this one is so far behind, I hate to call it third. This novel is completely empty. What is Rooney trying to say here? I found very little of interest and was happy to finish it and move on. I may not read the next Rooney novel. The trend is not promising…

I liked their thoughts about culture, fame and future anxiety, although some of them was pretty naive to me (economical issues in particular). But I think everyone was impressed by the wedding chapter

Bob wrote: "Daniel wrote: "the missing question mark of the title ..."

What is the deal w/ that?? Same thing w/ Where'd You Go, Bernadette. Do titles in the interrogative not have question marks?"

I think that is a thing... I've noticed it before. The only other example I can think of in the moment is What Are You Going Through but I know there are others.

I finished this last week but haven't had time to add my thoughts here until now.

Even though I didn't enjoy Normal People and was super disappointed to see this one make the shortlist (I wouldn't read it if I weren't a ToB completist), I decided to try my best at having an open mind with it. I listened to the audio version, and I'll admit, in the first 20 minutes or so, I was pleasantly surprised. There were some funny lines (like someone saying "you must be so happy for your sister getting married." And the response being, "Yeah, it's funny. I'm not."). I enjoyed some of the political philosophy comments throughout the story, like how markets preserve nothing, so the connection between capitalism and "conservatism" didn't make sense. The digs on novel writing and novelists like, "if novelists wrote honestly about their lives, no one would read the books." And how "non-readers are shunned as morally inferior." There were a few other lines that stood out to me, including, "instead of being willing to die for the Revolution, think about how you could live for the Revolution," and how instead of wanting requests for forgiveness, "God" might prefer hearing people's gratitude for what they have.

Those are some redeeming qualities, but unfortunately they weren't enough to make up for the issues with this book. So I guess I could say I enjoyed about 30% of it, and couldn't stand the other 70%. First, the good stuff felt out of sync with the rest. The pattern of this book seemed to be: snarky comment-sex-conversations about sex-email exchange-political comment-sex-conversations about sex-political comment, etc. It all felt disjointed to me, and the ending was just blah - unrealistic and lazy writing. While I liked most of the political comments (especially the one about the burden we put on the oppressed to find the solutions to their oppression using the tools of exploitation that have been used against them), it felt forced and my guess was Rooney was making up for Normal People being too subtle about touching on political/social issues (at least it was in my opinion). But it just didn't fit with the rest of the content here.

After finishing this one I read Olga Dies Dreaming and noticed the stark difference. There is tons of political commentary in Olga, but it fits into the greater narrative, unlike in this one, where it seems awkwardly plopped into this story about boring people and their boring lives.

That might have been one of the biggest issues here - I wasn't sure how we were supposed to care about any of these characters or their relationships. Other than a few witty comments, I couldn't find the character development here. I don't need all characters in novels to be "likeable," but I do need most of them to pique my interest in some way.

I also had issues with the writing on the sentence/word level. It probably wouldn't jump out at me as much if I weren't a writer in addition to a reader, but the adverbs in this novel... Yikes. They jumped out at me constantly, and each time I heard one I considered the sentence to ask whether it was useful, or if the sentence would have been stronger without it. I don't take the Stephen King stance of "all adverbs are bad no matter what" but I agree that they are mostly unnecessary and weaken writing (with exceptions, of course). I think there were multiple times someone was described as saying something "presently," and I can't imagine a more useless word in that sense. But, this is an issue with the editing, so I don't blame Rooney for this.

Anyway, I gave this book an honest attempt, but think it fell short and I would have loved for this shortlist spot to go to another book. I don't enjoy "hating" on books, especially when some folks love them. When I saw this was on the shortlist I was just as sad about the idea of reading it as I was for the idea of Rooney fans having to hear all the Rooney bashing that will come in the tournament. Her writing is not for me, but that doesn't mean I "wish her ill" or judge those who enjoy it. Oh well, hoping that part of the tournament won't be too painful.

Lauren wrote: "...I enjoyed some of the political philosophy comments throughout the story, like how markets preserve nothing, so the connection between capitalism and "conservatism" didn't make sense...."

I haven't read the book, and won't. Rooney has taken up enough of my attention already. But thanks Lauren (and the rest of you) for the comments here. Now I can pretend to have read it like everyone else.

But...wow, a couple of comments from the book really caught my attention.

This one about capitalism and conservativism.... I guess I approach the world a little differently. Given a fact about the world and a theory about the world that are in conflict, I'm not sure one's first reaction should be to shake your head at all the idiots who just don't get it. I think one's first reaction should be "something is wrong with my theory." But I'm not a novelist, so what do I know.

And this one: "if novelists wrote honestly about their lives, no one would read the books." Yikes! Again, I'm not a novelist, just a consumer of novels. But thank goodness there are novelists who don't feel like their obligation is to write about their own lives at all. Maybe the lesson isn't about being dishonest in your writing, maybe the lesson is that no one else is as interested in you as you are.

Evidently, being able to write isn't always the same thing as having something to say.

It's totally unfair to make these kinds of judgments of Rooney in such a second hand way, so mea culpa; but with two inexplicably deep tournament runs already, that's all the attention I can give her - the second hand side-effect of paying attention to all of you.

Bob wrote: "Daniel wrote: "the missing question mark of the title ..."

What is the deal w/ that?? Same thing w/ Where'd You Go, Bernadette. Do titles in the interrogative not have question marks?"

I liked them both quite a lot. The way Rooney writes about a mundane annoyances of day to day life speaks to me. Her view of the world and how people interact with each other feels more real and honest than many other books. All of the characters are flawed without an attempt to justify that or make them into misunderstood heroes.

I'm halfway through and came here hoping to find comments about how the second half is better than the first half. Oh, well.

I loved Conversations with Friends (ok, the parts about how it was more ethical to live off of your parents than work was annoying), liked Normal People fine and dislike this one so far. The format of the event of the previous chapter being exhaustively reexamined in a long email, as well as the self-involved goes at philosophical musings is not working for me.

On the other hand, I'm also waiting for In Concrete to show something more than clever word play, so this is a match-up I'm not going to care much about.

Lauren, great comments! Thanks for taking the time to write them out. I’m impressed you’re able to track sentence-level writing with an audiobook. I listened to this one as an audiobook as well, but I find it hard to focus on individual sentences in the audio format. Perhaps it’s your writer’s mind that helps with that.

I agree with your view of the political overlay. It felt tacked on without being actually integrated into the story. There were a few instances where Felix had to work while the others lazed about, but, in general, the problems of the real world were strangely absent from this book except for showing up in pretentious emails.

Gwendolyn wrote: "Lauren, great comments! Thanks for taking the time to write them out. I’m impressed you’re able to track sentence-level writing with an audiobook. I listened to this one as an audiobook as well, bu..."

Ha, it was mainly just the adverbs. Since I'm constantly searching for them in my own writing, they jump out at me in books sometimes. ;)

Totally agree about the tacked-on feeling, and general lack of work and other real-life things happening.

I REALLY liked this one! So far, I've liked this book best of all the ToB books I've read for this year. This was my first book by Rooney. I can understand why some people don't like her, and why a lot of people are irritated by her books.

I wasn't crazy about all the long philosophical emails, and I mostly zoned out for those - it felt like Rooney wanted us to know her characters inner feelings/thoughts, but she didn't want to write as an omniscient narrator, so this was her compromise.

I liked the meta part of the story with the author-character having had two huge successes, with movie options in progress, and how she's both loved and hated by the public. I really liked how the characters were all flawed, and unaware of their own flaws, and I liked how loyal they were to each other despite some friction. I found them relatable at times, and I was invested in how their stories would turn out. And, okay, I'm a total sap for an angsty love story, so that plotline sucked me right in.

Nadine in NY wrote: "I REALLY liked this one! So far, I've liked this book best of all the ToB books I've read for this year. This was my first book by Rooney. I can understand why some people don't like her, and why a..."

Well, I wouldn't have thought to recommend this one to you since I didn't like it, but I'm glad you finally found a ToB shortlist that worked for you - that's a win! :)

Lauren wrote: "Nadine in NY wrote: "I REALLY liked this one! So far, I've liked this book best of all the ToB books I've read for this year. This was my first book by Rooney. I can understand why some people don't like her, and why a..."

Well, I wouldn't have thought to recommend this one to you since I didn't like it, but I'm glad you finally found a ToB shortlist that worked for you - that's a win! :) ..."



You never know what will be a hit and what will be a miss, right? It's surprises like this book that keep me going, picking up books that I think I won't like. I really wasn't expecting to like this, but I had to see what all the controversy was about.

Nadine, if you're a sap for an angsty love story then you will LOVE Normal People. IMO it was like this but much better. And Conversations with Friends was better than this too IMO (Beautiful World was an almost total miss for me) but Normal People is by far my favorite of hers; I loved it.

Anita wrote: "Nadine, if you're a sap for an angsty love story then you will LOVE Normal People. IMO it was like this but much better. And Conversations with Friends was better than this too IMO (Beautiful World..."


thanks! I'm definitely reading both of them!

I think I read this novel very differently than y'all, lol. I thought it was Rooney making a case for the contemporary novel form when it might be seen as irrelevant to the real world. Much more ambitious than Normal People. I really enjoyed it.

I didn’t hate it but if it had gone on another 10 pages. All I could think of was “Youth is wasted on the young.” Now that I think about it, that was my reaction to Normal People too.

Anita wrote: "Nadine, if you're a sap for an angsty love story then you will LOVE Normal People. IMO it was like this but much better. And Conversations with Friends was better than this too IMO (Beautiful World..."

I just read Conversations with Friends and the first third is my favorite Rooney novel. :)