Beautiful World, Where Are You cover art

Beautiful World, Where Are You

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Beautiful World, Where Are You

By: Sally Rooney
Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £18.99

Buy Now for £18.99

About this listen

' Beautiful World, Where Are You is Rooney's best novel.' THE TIMES

The *new* novel from the internationally bestselling author of Normal People.

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young - but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They worry about sex and friendship and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

'A tour de force. The dialogue never falters, and the prose burns up the page.'
GUARDIAN

'Rooney's strongest writing thus far . . . There is a touching honesty and truthfulness in these pages, along with a quiet brilliance.'
FINANCIAL TIMES

'The book moved me to tears more than once . . . Rooney's best novel.'
THE TIMES

'Written with immense skill and illuminated by an endlessly incisive intelligence.'
IRISH TIMES

' Beautiful World, Where Are You is not just worth reading. It's worth thinking about.'
IRISH INDEPEDENT

'Brilliantly done: gripping, steamy, unbearably sad.'
TELEGRAPH

©2022 Sally Rooney (P)2022 Faber & Faber Coming of Age Contemporary Contemporary Romance Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Romance

Critic reviews

'Beautiful World, Where Are You is Rooney's best novel.' The Times

'A tour de force.' Anne Enright, Guardian

'Rooney's best novel yet.' Brandon Taylor, New York Times
All stars
Most relevant
perhaps one of the most important authors to come out of Ireland ..a new approach to not only observing relationships but also the knowing when we need details and when the story needs to move on. utterly brilliant

liife ..love and all the mess in-between

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It is very well written, introducing real characters with flaws who can be hard to like, in them we glimpse ourselves, the messiness of youth, love, sex and friendship. So much talent, writing to envy, I enjoyed reading it.

Beautiful writing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
thank you Sally 3 out of 3 greatly looking forward to my next visit to the west

thank you

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I think I would’ve liked the book better if I hadn’t hated the narration in this. The narrator puts on different voices for male/female characters, which results in the book sounding like a pantomime :/ the male voices were particularly bad. I will try to get a hard copy of this.

Hated the narrator :(

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
First please get a male to read the male characters in the book the monotone voices from the narrator was just giving the impression the characters were dull and unhappy all the time.

I honestly can’t say I hated this book but I didn’t love it either. It’s a simple story with average characters no real development of some of the main characters like Felix. His background story pops in and out with serious issue that are brushed over and never mentioned again. I can’t say I found any of the main characters to be that likeable except maybe Simon as he was probably the only one not second guessing his every action. The other main characters were very self obsessed constantly needing validation.
I found it difficult to establish a atmosphere while listening as a lot of the settings aren’t described in detail eg. Alice’s house, this usually wouldn’t bother me however when the author goes into such detail about other trivial things I can’t see why more description can’t go into the setting. Only for Im Irish and know where the places are and can imagine a house in rural Ireland I’d have no idea what some of the places were visually like. My final critique is on the boring essays of emails full of philosophical jargon they where unnecessary and had me tuning out. Overall it was an enjoyable book the last few chapters with the four characters together were the best part of the book I wished the rest of the book had the flow of these chapters. It’s what saved the book for me .
I will listen to any they Sally Rooney book as this was my first and maybe others are more enjoyable.

Not the worst not the best.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews