“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. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn’t it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world’s resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it’s the very reason I root for us to survive – because we are so stupid about each other.”
This is Sally Rooney’s thesis for this book in a nutshell, but it in no way captures how this book makes you feel. I tend to like to review books with a bit of contention, with a “maybe you’ll love it, maybe you’ll hate it” kind of message, but for me this one was a no-brainer. To say I loved it, is an understatement. BWWAY is a magnificent literary work, and more proof that Sally Rooney is a genius.
If you’ve never read a Sally Rooney novel, I’m not sure I can prepare you for it. The experience is at both times perplexing and deeply moving. The author manages to take you from societal and class critique to deep philosophy, to the outskirts of human feeling. You will meet complex characters with so many layers they will remind you of people you know in real life. You will see shameful and often glossed-over emotions laid bare before you and wonder at times if you really did read that sentence correctly. Reading Sally Rooney is like getting to know yourself and getting to know the world on a deeper level. It is discovering that life is so simple and complicated at once. It is, for lack of a better word, a truly educational experience.
BWWAY, like most of Rooney’s stories, follows the lives of two young adults—best friends— living in Ireland. Eileen is a literary magazine editor working in Dublin, while Alice is a famous novelist who, after suffering from a nervous breakdown, has retired to a coastal town to write and recuperate. Interwoven into their story are the lives of Felix and Simon, two very different men, whose roles while appearing at the outset to be quite secondary, take on more importance as the story progresses. The story enfolds on two planes— so to speak: told in third-person POV from the various characters’ perspectives, and then told in an epistolary form, through e-mails between Alice and Eileen. Every topic is covered, from relationships, to God, to history, to whether or not beauty can exist in a cosmetic world. The correspondence between the two girls—in particular— was beyond fascinating to me, as it is such a strong mixture of the personal and the theoretical. Tales of their romantic goings-on are intermixed with musings about the demise of civilization, the topography of Ireland, and the psychological illness of famous people. Sometimes, it is hard to follow their train of thought or the acuity of their argument, but it is always, always very instructive and leaves you wondering why your e-mails (or really messages, because who still sends e-mails) to your friends don’t sound as smart.
What really got me about the book, about Sally Rooney’s style in general, is how realistic the characters are. No character is ever just one thing, no character is ever romanticized, no character necessarily acts the way you expect them to act. Her characters are some of the best depictions of real people that I have ever read. Take Felix, for example. Felix is at both times a shit-stirrer, as he is sensitive-ish and unexpected. What starts out as kind of a brash character, while not exactly changing, evolves and diversifies. It is, I think, Rooney’s special brand of magic that allows her to write people who are so very human. I remember, when I read Conversations with Friends, thinking how unbelievable it was that the friendship between Bobbi and Frances could be portrayed with so many levels, insecurities and jealousies, as real friendships sometimes have. It was the first time I had seen such a non-cookie cutter experience of closeness depicted, and while the book itself left me more than a little jaded, I also felt like many of my thoughts, feelings and observations had been exposed for the first time. BWWAY does the same, with less of the dark stuff. You read about characters with flaws, but the story is not in particular about how they surmounted their flaws. As far as I can remember, no one actually really changes in the book. They just become exposed, and through that exposure something happens.
An interesting technical thing that I’d like to bring up about this book, is that Rooney does not use any quotation marks to mark dialogue. I can’t remember if that is something she has previously done as well, but I remember it threw me off a little when I started reading it. After a while, though, I really grew to love it. I feel like it added a level of intimacy to the book. As a writer, in particular, I was amazed that I could perhaps adopt this method in the future and not have to constantly think about punctuation marks.
While it may not sound that way from my review, I was quite hesitant to read this book. My previous experience with Rooney, while mind-blowing, was not exactly jolly and I wasn’t sure I could read something heavy. But this book surprised me in all the best ways. If for nothing else, I hope you read it for Rooney’s incredible dialogue skills (she was a university debate champion, apparently) and for that feeling it gives you that a part of you, somewhere, at some time, has been seen.
Read if you love being surprised.
Read if you like deep talk, philosophy and non-traditional characters.
Read just to say you’ve read a Sally Rooney novel.
4/5 stars.
