Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

107 reviews

chainsawheartbooks's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

“Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing”

This is the first book on the recommended reading for a course I’m taking in April, and I can’t lie, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

I’m quite open about the fact that I often struggle with more contemporary literary books, I’m just a sucker for gritty horror stories and tales of magical realism, and yet I found myself rather enjoying this once I got into it.

It did take me a while to get used to the lack of speech marks (and even now I still wish they’d been used) as well as the tonal shift as the chapters moved from telling the story to the emails shared by Alice and Eileen. 

But they were all such real and nuanced characters, I loved the mundane-ness of life that Rooney refers to throughout, and I was just rooting for everything to work out even when the characters were driving me nuts! And I think the fact they all had very real flaws meant that when they did or said something that made me want to slap some sense into them, I could still understand where their decisions came from.

This was the first of Rooney’s books that I’ve read but I’m intrigued to see how I get on with the other two on my list!
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theinspiredimp's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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spy_indeed's review against another edition

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challenging reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

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abernathy_33's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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draven_deathcrush's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

So, Sally Rooney owns my heart. This book made me smile, think, cringe, cry, literally everything. Most importantly, it made me think about my friends, and I loved that. 
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cmcrockford's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Sally Rooney is a good writer badly in need of an editor and I say this as a person whose title includes Editor. The last third of the book is much better than the first two, in part because Manic Pixie Working Class Guy Felix provokes so much previously unspoken resentment out of these slightly miserable, PMC literary people. 

Rooney's very good at dialogue and this makes me wonder if she should just write tv or theater. When she uses novelistic techniques, they either feel virtuoso (the wedding) or outright clumsy (the emails, the sentences with multiple ambiguous descriptors). Editors are your friends! We value the good stuff, cut the bullshit, and tell you when one phrase will do instead of three. Sally, call me. 

Notes: It is ok to write essays and not put your own thoughts into novels. I don't talk like this in emails. No one does. Men have been rightly accused of writing Tits McChestawesome type female characters for years, but here Felix is a rescue dog owner, working class laborer, and handsome bisexual, also great in bed, where Simon is a tall idealist Catholic politician, evidently also great in bed. These men exist. Yes. I'm confident in that. 
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kcweber22's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Shooo I haven’t read a lit book in ages, but this one was superb. I love love loved Eileen, but found Alice a bit intolerable. It made me think a lot, and I really enjoy that
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wickedgrumpy's review against another edition

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emotional slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Midway through the book I realized why I wasn't having a good time.  It's not as though I don't enjoy slice of life stories or the micro analysis of some basic everyday random people living their lives as best they can, but there was nothing that endeared me to the characters at all.
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afrenette's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

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georgiasophia's review against another edition

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dark funny hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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