Tag: Sally Rooney

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A Book & A Beer – Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

I really quite liked Normal People by Sally Rooney plus the NY Times book crew really liked her latest book, so I picked up Beautiful World, Where Are You at the library.

And it was not to my liking.

I did not like any of the four main characters. Nor did I find their choices very smart. The last sixty pages or so were a slog. There were a couple times where I wished there would be some extraordinary outside event happen, like a car crash or illness. Anything to pull the novel out of the rut it was in.

I think Rooney has a style and characters that are just on the tipping point for me in terms of likability. Normal People stayed at the point but Beautiful World and Alice, Eileen, Simon and Felix fell over.

For this novel, pick two beers from breweries that you don’t normally like and do the same and pick two styles that you don’t like and taste them and try to match them to the four main characters.

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A Book & A Beer – Normal People by Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney has gotten a lot of press for her books but it took me awhile to hear about her, and so instead of picking up her latest book ” Beautiful World, Where Are You?”, I chose an earlier one, Normal People.

It follows Marianne and Connell two high schoolers about to leave County Sligo for college in Dublin and how they weave in and out of each other’s lives as the years pass.

Normally, I am not fond of the will they – won’t they being stretched past all reasonable bounds. If you can’t write past meet cute then I lose interest. But the two leas characters in this book are moving, both through life and emotionally and by making them three-dimensional, what could be contrived re-meetings are more akin to two people orbiting each other. I thought the book ended well and would be up to have Rooney re-visit these characters when she and they are older.

Because this book moves through the lives of it protagonists, a flight of beers from your cellar might be in order. Maybe a flight of Anchor Christmas or the Anniversary beers from Firestone Walker.