Beautiful World, Where Are You

““That’s the thing about work, if it was any good you’d do it for free.””

― Sally Rooney

Why I’m Reading this Book?

This book is the Goodreads Choice Awards winner in Fiction category. Last year Midnight library was the winner and I liked it, so I thought to end the year with an award winning book.

Synopsis

Story of two couples, Alice-Felix and Eileen-Simon where Alice and Eileen are best friends. Story is mostly in form of emails Alice and Eileen write to each other and muse over their lives. Both couples are super attracted to each other and also involved intimately but they are not ready to fully commit and story is how they finally accept their feelings.

My Review…

Alice is a celebrated writer and Eileen is in a mediocre job which barely pays the bill, so we have both end of income spectrum. However, both of them are extremely unhappy. They write these emails in flourishing style and discuss world’s , civilization’s and planet’s problems, but they are inept in solving their life’s problems and it gets tiring and boring very fast. If they would just accept who they are, both of them actually have no problems.

Both of their lovers love them, but they constantly push them away. When they got pushed a little far, they call them again and say let’s be friends. Little time passes when they are in friendship mode, and soon they again get involved intensely and cycle continues.

These characters are classic examples of people who imagine problems when there are none and wallow in their own misery. If they are happy, they don’t remain happy for much longer. They think they are intellectuals, but I find them morons.

I couldn’t relate to these characters one bit. Story was very slow with no interesting plot. I knew what would happen and I wasn’t interested at all in what is happening. This is one of those books which perplex me because this is an award-winning book and I was looking forward to the end of it.

For some reasons, first book of a new year is always a disaster for me, so that way I paid my dues for year 2022 with this book and I’m happy to move ahead and forget all about this.

My Rating — 1

On the scale of: (1- Hate , 2- Neither like nor dislike, 3- Like, 4- Love, 5- Gaga)

Why anyone else should read this Book?

I wouldn’t suggest this book to anyone. I found it extremely irritating. I don’t even know who could be the intended audience for this.

May be people with interest in romance genre may like it, but I’m not so sure.

Read it if you like and let me know what you think about it? Till then, Happy Reading!!

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“Reading a book isn’t a race – the better the book, the slower it should be absorbed. – Naval Ravikant”

Love, Richa