The world probably doesn’t need another review of Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney by now, but you’re going to get one anyway. Rooney’s much anticipated third novel tells the story of Alice and her friend Eileen, both approaching 30 and living in Ireland, having met as roommates at university. Alice is a successful novelist who meets warehouse worker Felix through a dating app. Eileen is getting over a break-up by flirting with a man called Simon who she has known since childhood. Rather than getting in touch via texts or calls, Alice and Eileen continue their long-distance friendship by having lengthy earnest conversations via email about capitalism. On balance, I found this epistolary device too convenient and less convincing than the instant messaging chats in Conversations with Friends which remains my favourite of her three novels to date. Nevertheless, ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’ further cements Rooney’s signature narrative style, which is more about pacing than plot and achieved very skilfully, and she remains particularly good at portraying power dynamics through dialogue and writing endings which are open yet not frustratingly so.
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Autumn Reading: Part One
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Lockdown Reading: Part One
Lots of people might be seeking out comfort reads in these strange times, but it seems that I am not one of them. Anyone with anxieties about hospitals, lockdown or politics probably won’t want to look at the books I have been reading recently which include a novel set in a hospital, diaries written by a prisoner at HMP Wandsworth and a survey of modern UK Prime Ministers from Harold Wilson to Theresa May. On the plus side, all three books contain a fair amount of dark humour.
Bodies by Jed Mercurio is the 2002 novel which forms the basis of the BBC TV drama of the same name which aired from 2004-06 about whistleblowing in hospitals. Best known for creating the TV series Line of Duty and Bodyguard, Mercurio trained as a junior doctor in Birmingham and his knowledge and experience is evident in a grimly realistic account of frontline healthcare. It is clear that his debut novel was very much an early blueprint for the TV series which, in my view, is far more developed in terms of plot and characterisation, both of which are only lightly sketched in the novel. The TV series is set in an obstetrics and gynaecology department with junior doctor Rob Lake suspecting that consultant Roger Hurley is negligent towards his patients. The novel shares the same central theme of whistleblowing and sees an unnamed newly qualified house officer fresh out of medical school starting work in an accident and emergency department. He makes mistakes resulting in injury and death, as do his colleagues, and the central dilemma is neatly summarised towards the end: “Whether as doctors we make an honest mistake or we commit a huge clanging act of incompetence, the system treats us the same” (p. 329). The unnamed protagonist becomes detached and disillusioned as the boundaries between right and wrong become increasingly blurred. I wasn’t sure the dramatic tension on screen would be as effective in the book but I would say both are equally stressful with plenty of black humour and cynicism thrown in for good measure. ‘Bodies’ is engaging and pacy but definitely not for the faint-hearted.
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