Beautiful World, Where Are You, Sally Rooney
Beautiful World, Where Are You, Sally Rooney
35 Rating(s)
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

Beautiful World, Where Are You
A Novel

Bestseller

Author: Sally Rooney

Narrator: Aoife McMahon

Unabridged: 10 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/07/2021


Synopsis

"Aoife McMahon is a gem of a narrator, helping create the perfect atmosphere for Rooney’s story." -Book Riot

"McMahon's acting dexterity shows in seamless shifts between points of view, characters, and emotions. Male to female, white-collar to blue-collar, anger to passion - her crisp Irish accent makes these transitions with the lightness of a lark. Likewise, via McMahon, Rooney's peerless descriptions imprint upon the mind's eye. The listener won't soon forget a silk blouse caressed like a pet, freckled arms made pink by the sun, the coast of Ireland at nightfall, or the forgiveness of a best friend." -AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winning review

Beautiful World, Where Are You is a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends.

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 have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships 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 Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About Sally Rooney

Irish born, new author, Sally Rooney, had her debut novel published in 2017, entitled Conversations with Friends. The debut novel was followed by Normal People, in 2018, and adapted into a TV series in 2020.

Rooney grew up in Castleberry, County Mayo, where her father was an employee of Telecom Eireann, and her mother was administrator of an art center. Rooney was elected a scholar at Trinity College Dublin, in 2011. She studied politics there, and completed a degree in American literature instead. She graduated with an M.A. in 2013. She is a self-described Marxist. Debating was her strong suit, as she became the top debater at the European University Debating Champions. She currently lives in Dublin.


Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on March 19, 2025

Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. [URL not allowed] My limited and rarely tested abilities to write a five star review, ever decaying and decreasing from lack of use. We meet again. I will continue to make my own lack of skill the audience for this review, just for a......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on September 11, 2021

Let me start this review by saying that I think Sally Rooney is an excellent writer on the sentence level. Every word moves the plot forward or illustrates a meaningful detail about her characters. Her dialogue in particular is extraordinary. Even though I had mixed feelings about Conversations w......more

Goodreads review by Emily May on September 16, 2021

I don't know what it is. All of you scratching your heads about the success of this book and Normal People... I get it. I was actually somewhat irritated by Beautiful World, Where Are You. The characters were annoying, often outright obnoxious, deeply pretentious in their philosophical musings... kin......more

Goodreads review by Jack on September 02, 2021

A mature departure from her previous work, BWWAY is exactly the novel we need right now from one of the world's most promising and impressive authors. Rooney's characteristic style glimmers amongst fascinating conversations (sans quotation marks) about climate anxiety, class-consciousness, and langu......more

Goodreads review by Barry on September 04, 2021

reviewed this in a twitter thread so i'm transplanting that here the tea? i think it’s good. i think sally has managed to ‘mature’ her writing very successfully. also, sally has jokes! a good alternative title would be Sally Rooney’s Surprisingly Down to Earth and Very Funny. fucking hell is it bloate......more


Awards

  • Los Angeles Times Holiday Books Guide
  • New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year
  • The Guardian (UK) Best Books of the Year
  • Financial Times Books of the Year
  • NPR Best Book of the Year
  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
  • Buzzfeed Best Books of the Year
  • Hudson Booksellers Best of the Year
  • Time Magazine Best Books of the Year
  • USA Today Best Books of the Year
  • Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year
  • Amazon.com Best Books of the Year
  • Washington Post Best Books of the Year
  • Goodreads Choice Awards