When the man returned and put the drinks down, a drop of lager spilled over and she watched its rapid progress down the side of his glass.” She looked outside now at the sunset as if it were of interest to her, though she hadn’t paid any attention to it before. Her outward attitude had become more alert and lively since the man had entered the room.

The woman at the table tapped her fingers on a beermat, waiting. Rather than carrying the bottle of tonic back to the table, he emptied it into the glass with a quick and practised movement of his wrist. The waitress asked how he was getting on, and he answered: Good yeah, yourself? He ordered a vodka tonic and a pint of lager. “He asked her what she wanted to drink and then went to the bar to order. What’s with all these details? Is it an attempt at distancing the reader and have them figure things out on their own? Is it a gimmick that for some reason sounded interesting at one point? Is it compassion for the person eventually adapting this to the big or small screen? I suspect the latter, given that this will probably join the queue of Rooney adaptations. But the majority of the book is written basically like a screenplay, with step-by-step instructions. But what made me cringe and shrug in frustrated boredom was the language of the bulk of the book, clearly done intentionally as those interlude emails show a completely different and much more engaging style. And every other chapter there is a complete tone shift from that to the flourishing long emails between Eileen and Alice about more profound things in life, at times sophisticated and at times naive and yet painfully earnest and quite a bit reminiscent of those wine-fueled intellectual conversations in college in which truthseeking was stubbornly pursued. There are multitudes of details of their daily routines, either pointlessly awkward or perhaps profound (depending on the point of view, I suppose) conversations - verbal and text messages - and quite a few pages of detailed, mechanistic and honestly quite boring and exceedingly awkward almost-voyeristic sex. It follows four people who make up two eventual couples - Alice and Felix and on the other side of the country Eileen and Simon. Why? It’s not fresh or daring but just irritating, and I know you know how to use them. Oh, and before I forget in the rants to come - dear writers, please oh please do not skip dialogue tags in your writing. I don’t know whether that goes along with supposedly being a voice of an entire generation to which I belong - but awkwardness permeates everything, and my reactions fluctuated between boredom, periodic cringing and occasional spark of recognition and relatability - which unfortunately ended up buried under the awkward bits much too often. “Purposeful awkwardness” is how I can describe this book in just two words.

Review of beautiful world where are you