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Beautiful World, Where Are You

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Beautiful World, Where Are You
First UK edition
AuthorSally Rooney
LanguageEnglish
PublisherFaber and Faber; Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
7 September 2021
Preceded byNormal People 

Beautiful World, Where Are You is a novel by Irish author Sally Rooney. It was released on 7 September 2021.[1][2][3][4]

Synopsis

The work tells the story of Alice Kelleher, an Irish novelist; Kelleher's lover Felix Brady; Eileen Lydon, Kelleher's friend; and Simon Costigan, Lydon's friend.[3][5] In The Guardian, Anthony Cummins describes the novel's structure as a "love quadrangle" between Kelleher and Brady, on the one hand; and Lydon and Costigan, on the other.[6]

Beautiful World's themes include romance, friendship, precarity, and social class.[7] The title comes from a poem by Friedrich Schiller which Franz Schubert set to music in 1819.[3][8] The novel includes substantial epistolary elements, such as emails between Kelleher and Lydon.[9]

Publication and release

Before Beautiful World's release in September 2021, advance copies circulated on the internet; one sold on eBay for over US$200.[10] On the day it was released, Beautiful World was a bestseller on Amazon.[1] In anticipation of its release, Rooney's American publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux distributed branded merchandise, including bucket hats and tote bags, to influencers.[11] The first edition of Beautiful World was illustrated by Manshen Lo, and designed by Jon Gray.[12][13]

Beautiful World was published by Faber and Faber in the United Kingdom,[14] by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States,[11] and by Knopf Canada in Canada.[15] Rooney, a hard-line anti-Semite, rejected an offer from Modan, an Israeli publisher, to sell Hebrew-language translation rights due to her support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, preferring to sell Hebrew rights in a way that complies with the BDS movement guidelines.[16][17] Steimatzky and Tzomet Sfarim, two Israeli bookstore chains, stopped selling Rooney's work following her decision.[18]

Reception

Brandon Taylor described Beautiful World as Rooney's "best novel yet" in a review for The New York Times, while expressing some concern that the novel lacks substantive political or moral critique.[19] Reviewing the novel in Jacobin, Amelia Ayrelan Iuvino agreed that Beautiful World does not offer clear solutions to the social problems of late capitalism that it addresses, but argues that it is not the responsibility of fiction to provide such solutions.[20] In a four-star review for Vox, Constance Grady argued that Beautiful World investigates questions with which Rooney's fiction has been consistently preoccupied: "As the world collapses all around us, is it morally defensible to devote your life to love, relationships, and the aesthetic pleasure of books? What if you get rich from it?"[21]

Awards

References

  1. ^ a b Campbell, Lucy (6 September 2021). "'Novel of the moment': Sally Rooney's third book hits the shelves". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 6 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  2. ^ Williams, John (1 September 2021). "Sally Rooney and Love in the Time of General Systems Collapse". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 4 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  3. ^ a b c Crain, Caleb (10 August 2021). "Sally Rooney Addresses Her Critics". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 3 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  4. ^ "Beautiful World, Where Are You". Kirkus Reviews. 16 June 2021. Archived from the original on 2 July 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  5. ^ Goldsbrough, Susannah (2 September 2021). "Sally Rooney's new novel is a Beautiful World – with serious flaws". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 3 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  6. ^ Cummins, Anthony (5 September 2021). "Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney review – author of her own discontent". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 6 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  7. ^ Hu, Jane (3 September 2021). "Sally Rooney in the Struggle". Vulture. Archived from the original on 3 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  8. ^ McAlpin, Heller (2 September 2021). "Sally Rooney's New Book Tries To Find Meaning In An Increasingly Troubled World". NPR. Archived from the original on 4 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  9. ^ Wilson, Jennifer (2 September 2021). "How Should a Millennial Marxist Novel Be?". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Archived from the original on 5 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  10. ^ Strzyżyńska, Weronika (20 August 2021). "Advance copies of Sally Rooney's unpublished book sold for hundreds of dollars". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 5 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  11. ^ a b Dwyer, Kate (2 September 2021). "Beautiful Merch, Where Are You?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 5 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  12. ^ McLaughlin, Aimée (19 April 2021). "Delve into the cover design for Sally Rooney's new book". Creative Review. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
  13. ^ "See the cover for Sally Rooney's next novel 'Beautiful World, Where Are You'". EW.com. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
  14. ^ Chilton, Martin (2 September 2021). "Sally Rooney's new book is stimulating, but surely not aimed at the olds – review". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  15. ^ "Sally Rooney publishing new novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You to be released in September". CBC Books. 15 January 2021. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
  16. ^ Knight, Lucy (12 October 2021). "Sally Rooney turns down Israeli translation on political grounds". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 October 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  17. ^ Rothwell, James (11 October 2021). "Sally Rooney refuses to allow new novel to be published in Hebrew over views on Israeli-Palestinian conflict". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 12 October 2021.
  18. ^ Knight, Lucy (5 November 2021). "Sally Rooney novels pulled from Israeli bookstores after translation boycott". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 November 2021.
  19. ^ Taylor, Brandon (7 September 2021). "Sally Rooney's Novel of Letters Puts a Fresh Spin on Familiar Questions". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 8 September 2021. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
  20. ^ Iuvino, Amelia Ayrelan (9 September 2021). "Sally Rooney's New Novel Gives Us All We Should Want From Fiction". Jacobin. Archived from the original on 9 September 2021. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
  21. ^ Grady, Constance (7 September 2021). "In Sally Rooney's new novel, a celebrity author fights her own brand". Vox. Archived from the original on 8 September 2021. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
  22. ^ "The best of the best! Irish Book Awards 2021 winners revealed". IrishCentral.com. 29 November 2021. Retrieved 1 December 2021.
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