Se terminó!!!!!! Al fin.

Lo que más me gustó fueron los mails que se mandaban Eileen y Alice. El resto la verdad que era una repetición de días. Ni hablar de las escenas más inservibles de todas: las escenas de sexo. PARA QUÉ.

A comparación de Normal People, no me enloqueció.

( )

A thoroughly lovely book! ( )

This was my first book from this popular author. I found it absorbing enough to finish, to find out what happened to the various relationships among the foursome, but I was not as affected by the prose as I had hoped I'd be. Competently written but not poetic. Interesting ideas crop up in the style alternating email with action such that a long philosophical chapter is relieved by a scene-filled action chapter. And her political ideas are solid (“My theory is that human beings lost the instinct for beauty in 1976, when plastics became the most widespread material in existence”) - read the quotes in this entry to get a good idea of the book. ( )

“Wherever I go, you are with me, and so is he, and that as long as you both live the world will be beautiful to me” (173).

Reading this book is like living through the global pandemic, which is where the novel ends—months into an isolated, socially-distanced COVID world. Both the book and pandemic life make you question the world on a philosophical level: lots of introspections and musings about life’s biggest questions, mainly about relationships and happiness. And while the ruminating chapters are often melancholic and maudlin, like the characters themselves, in the end, there is a general acceptance and peace (or is it denial?) that seems to end in hopeful light and happiness.

Eileen and Simon and Alice and Felix: each is at a crossroads as they move from one season of life into another—from the carefree, responsibility-free youth of their 20s into the realistic adult-world of their 30s. They’re not so much searching for their purpose in life—because of their (mostly) nihilistic perceptions, they’re okay not having a purpose—but they are searching for love. Through their old and new relationships with each other, as well as several existential crises and infuriating behaviors and life choices, they do, in the end, find love and happiness, which made the book more a 4.5 than a 3.5. I needed them to end up happy because so much was sad. Instead of throwing the book across the room with a, “Damn you, Sally Rooney, for luring me in with promises of young people searching for love,” I was able to close the book smiling—pretending their happiness would be lasting. ( )

This was just a disappointment.
Boring, self-absorbed characters in complete detachment from the real world in a story with no plot and no character development. I liked "Normal People", even though I didn't love it. There was enough nuance in it to keep it interesting, even though I disliked Rooney's "tell, don't show" approach, but this latest book has nothing good going for it.

In one of the chapters, the writer, Alice, talks about how the majority of other authors are so disconnected from real life that it doesn't make sense to read any of that stuff. I feel the same about Rooney's novels. ( )