In May, there was only one status symbol in the publishing world – a fresh-off-the-press advance copy of Sally Rooney’s third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You Using the hashtag #BWWAY, industry insiders couldn’t resist showing off their delight to the have-nots as they received their coveted copies.
nd this week, fans got a substantial taster of what to expect as the latest edition of The New Yorker magazine published a sizeable extract from the highly anticipated novel.
In the extract, entitled ‘Unread Messages’, readers are yet again plunged into Rooney’s spare, but highly astute writing style. As one might expect from the Mayo-born author, the dialogue blazes with authenticity, and perfectly captures the back and forth of a young man and woman stumbling tentatively within a complex, hard-to-define relationship.
In contemporary Dublin we meet Eileen, a twentysomething at work in her copy-editing job. She comes from Galway, where her father managed a farm and her mother was a geography teacher.
Eileen is in contemplative mode, possibly because her sister Lola, with whom Eileen appears to have a lukewarm relationship, is getting married. She meets her old friend Simon (who lived in her hometown, in a local manor house) for coffee, and their dynamic is beguiling from the offset.
He has received a plus-one invite for Lola’s wedding, which is more than Eileen has received. Though Eileen and Simon evidently have A History, he’s bringing a girl he has started seeing to the wedding.
After finishing work, Eileen goes home to stalk an old flame, whose social media profile reads: “local sad boy. normal brain haver. check out the soundcloud”.
Conversations With Friends and Normal People were consummate character studies. As this extract ably proves, she has once again encapsulated the multi-layered experience of twentysomething living with serious elan.
In an interview published alongside the extract, Rooney told The New Yorker: “One thing Simon and Eileen have in common is that they both seem confused as to how they have ended up in the lives they are currently leading. Neither their plans nor their desires seem to account completely for the situations in which they find themselves here.”
Asked about her characters’ prolific use of the internet, social media and texting, Rooney adds: “The reality is that I spend a lot of time on the internet, although I don’t use social media anymore. Most of my close friends live elsewhere, and I communicate with them online, through messages and e-mails. And I also use the Internet to make purchases, and to learn about things, and so on.
“None of the principal characters in this book, or anywhere in my work, curate public social-media profiles where they post updates about their lives or cultivate a particular persona. So that aspect of Internet use, which I gather is a pretty big part of online life, is not addressed in my work at all. There are lots of aspects of life that I know nothing about, and on which, as a result, my books are silent. But the characters definitely send text messages, and browse social-media Web sites, and read e-mails. I almost can’t imagine how it would be possible for them not to.”
Since the title was announced at the beginning of the year, the publication of Beautiful World, Where Are You is already shaping up to be the literary event of 2021. The book is released on Faber & Faber on September 7.
Meanwhile, the TV adaptation of Rooney’s debut novel, Conversations With Friends has secured pre-sales with a number of leading global broadcasters and platforms, among them Amazon Prime and HBO Max.
Commissioned by BBC Three in the UK and Hulu in the US, the series started filming in Dublin and Belfast in April. The series stars emerging talent Alison Oliver, Sasha Lane (American Honey, The Miseducation Of Cameron Post), Joe Alwyn (The Favourite, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk) and Jemima Kirke (Sex Education, Girls).