Beautiful World, Where Are You is told in many different ways, making it very different to Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Parts are told through long rambling emails between Alice and Eileen. Parts are what you’d expect from Rooney: dialogue and interactions between characters that sometimes act friendly and sometimes with animosity. And parts have a movie-like quality, where you’re the observer and facial expressions are described but not explained, the motivations behind actions are considered but not clarified, and characters get to keep their secrets.

A lot of the emails between Eileen and Alice are incredibly self-indulgent. Especially in the beginning and especially when discussing politics or religion, I found myself skimming a lot. It may have been a case of too much too soon, before I cared enough about these characters, but I definitely found them less enjoyable than the other parts of the book.

The dialogue and interactions were my favourite parts of Beautiful World, Where Are You, though I also appreciated the cinema-style excerpts. They gave a little backstory, added some intrigue and mystery, and were sometimes so frustrating I wanted to shake Eileen and tell her to smarten up. Or Simon and get him to use his words. Alice and Felix were more difficult characters for me. Alice remains mostly a mystery, but Felix would swing wildly from favourite to worst character, and I’m not entirely positive where I landed.