We’re back with what we’re calling “the middle and the miscommunications” in our “Sally Sundays”. We have your read-along recap of pages 147-247 of Beautiful World, Where Are You.

**  Speaking of miscommunication, we start by discussing Simon & Eileen’s will they or won’t they saga. We play armchair psychologists and analyze Eileen’s daddy issues and how it impacts her relationship with Simon. These two continue to confound us. (01:00)

** Eileen keeps insisting she just wants to be friends with Simon, whereas he is trying to be direct. We discuss why Eileen puts up her barriers to vulnerability and whether we think these two can ever be happy without her knowing what she truly wants.  (09:11) 

** Carinn declares that Sally Rooney shatters the very foundation on which she stands on by making her dig deep into what the “hate” means in the thin line of love and hate. (26:27)

** We move on to “Alix”, aka Alice & Felix.  What kind of miscommunication do we love? On the miscommunication spectrum of EIleen & Simon, Alice & Felix and Marianne & Connell, we each pick which ones we love and which we can’t stand. We discuss the antagonistic communication style of Alice & Felix and then put Carinn on the couch to discuss how she is really Alice. (31:27)

** Felix’s night out without Alice creates a lot of tension, and when he “gives in” and goes to Alice, Carinn thinks his cruelty is just a way for him to not feel he’s falling in love. We debate whether they are in love yet, when we each mark two people as being “in love”, and what that feels like. Does love come before a relationship or does a relationship come before love? (45:03)

** We go deep into how power dynamics between two people factor into miscommunications. Carinn blows Kate’s mind by suggesting that Eileen is the one with the power over Simon, and how her feeling of “powerlessness” is her giving away her power to avoid having to do the work of figuring out herself. (59:20)

** The emails in this section are not working for us like the prior ones, but we discuss those bits that did speak to us...her musings on what great novels do to us as readers and how Alice has had to re-think what love means. (71:46)

** We end with a discussion about desire and, as usual, Sally Rooney gives words to something Carinn has long felt. She presses us to examine…what are you really desiring? (80:45)

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