After his novel phenomenon normal people (L’Olivier, 2021), sold over a million copies worldwide, and adapted into a series, the Irish novelist Sally Rooney continues her painting of Generation Y with But where are you, admirable world? published on August 19 by Olivier editions. She tells the daily life of two young people in their thirties who try to (sur)live their lives on a planet in full “accelerated degeneration”…
The story : After having gone through an episode of depression, Alice, a young successful novelist, leaves Dublin and moves to a coastal village in the countryside, in the old presbytery, a large house that was lent to her. There, via a dating application, she meets Félix, a local guy. After a fiasco first evening, Alice and Félix begin a romantic relationship.
Eileen, Alice’s best friend, is a journalist at a literary publication. Scarred by her separation from Aidan, a man with whom she lived for a few years and who left her, she reconnects with Simon, a childhood friend a little older than her, with whom she has always had an ambiguous relationship.
The two young women, soon to be in their thirties, very regularly exchange e-mails in which they tell each other the adventures of their lives, the little nothings of their daily life, tackling without taboo all sorts of subjects such as love, sex, God, money, friendship, the biological clock, beauty, politics…
But where are you, admirable world? is the story of a double slice of life, in this key moment of existence (the thirties) when everything seems to have to take an irreversible direction. Sally Rooney thus continues her exploration of Generation Y, of these “millennials” condemned to enter adulthood in a world that is going badly.
The novelist has no equal in describing the tiny nothings that make up life, while casting a sharp and questioning gaze on a world in turmoil, in the midst of a crisis, with role models – whether they are in love, sexual, economic, political, aesthetic, or social – in full remodeling.
By dwelling on the simplest feelings, which have governed human relationships since the dawn of time, love, friendship, desire, jealousy… the novelist manages to bring out a form of truth about the world of humans, whose substantial marrow is inexorably nestled in intimacy. “Perhaps we were simply born to love and worry about those around us, even when there is more important to do”remarks Eileen in one of her missives to Alice.
“When we should have reorganized the distribution of planetary resources and led a collective transition towards a sustainable economic model, we were concerned about sex and friendship.”
“But where are you, admirable world”p. 133
Alice feels the world is “entered a phase of decadence” in which “ugliness is the predominant visual characteristic of modern life”. Eileen feels like “sitting on a tiny ledge at a dizzying height” and that the only thing that “supports” is “the misery and degradation of almost everything on earth”. And yet, the two young women continue to breathe, live, love, desire, cry, in short, to live, and to “expending energy on trivialities, when civilization threatens to collapse“, but constantly traversed by the absurdity of this paradox.
Sally Rooney, who herself experienced planetary success at a very young age, also wonders through Alice’s voice about success, about triumph (“I had to hold on, go through it all without anyone telling me how to do it, and I came to hate myself to an almost unbearable degree”).
The Irish writer also shines a spotlight on the literary world, piquing these writers cut off from the world “who come home after a weekend in Berlin, four interviews, three photo shoots, three long, cozy dinners where everyone has complained about the bad reviews, and they open their old Macbook to write “a heartfelt novel about ordinary life”when in truth they know nothing of ordinary life” says Alice.
“If novelists wrote honestly about their lives, no one would read their novels.”
“But where are you, admirable world?”p. 115
Sally Rooney’s hyperrealistic writing operates like a macro lens that would photograph the geography of the contemporary world in its smallest details, its scenery, its light, its atmosphere, a camera that would film scrupulously, with a magnifying glass, daily gestures of some of its inhabitants, then would go through the bodies like a probe to scrutinize the minds, the feelings, the anxieties, the pleasures that animate them, or flush out the questions that torment them. This meticulous writing, without ellipsis, without fade, gives an almost disturbing clarity, an almost too harsh light on realities that we often prefer to keep in the blur.
But if the planet is unquestionably in “accelerated degeneration”a few fragments of beauty continue to inhabit it, inspiring the most beautiful pages of this third novel by Sally Rooney, which captures the melancholy of the contemporary world, but also the human, universal needs, to be one with others, and to hope. in the future, whatever the fate of the planet.
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“Where are you, wonderful world?” by Sally Rooney (translated from English (Ireland) by Laetitia Devaux, Éditions de L’Olivier, 384 p., €23.50)
Extract :
“Slowly the sea sucked all the water off the beach, leaving a stretch of sand glistening under the stars; wet, tangled seaweed teeming with insects; the squat, deserted dunes, their grasses flattened by the cool wind. The paved path that left the beach, silent and covered with white sand, the curved roofs of the caravans that gleamed faintly, the dark cars lurking in the grass.Then the games room, the ice cream kiosk with its awning down and, on the way up towards the city, the post office, the hotel, the restaurant. The Sailor’s Friend with closed doors, faded stickers on the windows. The lights of a passing car, its taillights red like hot coals. Farther in the street, a row of houses, their windows reflecting soulless lampposts, garbage cans lined up, then the coastal road, silent, empty, the trees standing tall in the darkness.The sea to the west, a taut, dark fabric. And to the east, the life ux rectory blue as milk. Inside, four bodies slept, woke up, went back to sleep. On the side or on the back, the duvets folded down, they crossed the dreams in silence. And already, behind the house, the rising sun. On the walls and through the branches of the trees, through the colored leaves and the wet green grass, the dim light of dawn. An early summer morning. Cold, clear water cupped in one hand. (“But where are you, admirable world, p. 291)