Alice is that kind of author: the “Yesterday afternoon I gave three interviews and did an hour-long photo shoot” kind, the adored so much it must be too much (and suspect)-the kind of author with a Wikipedia page, movie rights worth selling off, and, oh, yes, lots of money, enough to pay off her estranged mother’s mortgage and to entertain the notion of buying a “chaotically huge” four-bedroom seaside rectory, three hours from Dublin, where she’s residing in a hiatus of sorts after a breakdown sent her to a psychiatric hospital.įor a certain kind of reader, Alice is a siren: no other protagonist in Rooney’s previous novels-“ Conversations with Friends” (2017) and “ Normal People” (2018), the latter the basis for a Hulu and BBC limited series that Rooney co-wrote-beckons so seductively to be interpreted as a stand-in for Rooney herself. She is reticent and proud of this fact, and a measure of each colors her begrudging participation in the requisite publicness that characterizes the contemporary version of her profession. A market exists for these books, a lot of people consider them good, and so Alice the novelist is successful. People,” as she says near the close of a stilted first date with Felix, a warehouse worker. She-Alice, that is-writes books about, “oh, I don’t know. . . . She is one of four main characters in “ Beautiful World, Where Are You,” the third novel by the Irish author Sally Rooney. Her name contains five letters and two syllables: Alice.
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