Sometimes Sally Rooney's characters stick with me in the kind of way that makes me pick apart every sentence the next day. In 'Beautiful World, Where Are You' the quartet at the heart of the book are Alice,
eileen, Felix and Simon. Alice is the famous writer figure — brilliant, anxious, often isolated by her success and the weirdness of being watched. She writes, questions everything, and has a blunt, sardonic way of seeing the world.
Eileen is Alice's closest friend and the book's other emotional compass; she's more grounded in day-to-day life and wrestles with love, loyalty, and what it means to grow older. Felix is the warm, practical foil to Alice: kind, down-to-earth, and invested in a life that feels solid rather than performative. Simon is tangled up with Eileen in messy, modern relationship dynamics; he’s charming but complicated. The novel lives in their letters and conversations, exploring friendship, fame, politics and intimacy — and I keep thinking about how Rooney makes ordinary things feel urgent, which I love.