*Beautiful World, Where Are You?* — the new Sally Rooney novel
It is really good, and more subtle than one might have expected. Imagine Ireland’s #1 left-wing writer imbibing the brew of Ross Douthat over the last few years and putting it all into fictional form, and convincingly at that. I don’t just mean the Mass scene and the pornography discussion, it is the consistent theme running throughout the book.
The tale ends up as a true case for cultural optimism, albeit with some reasonable qualifications.
Here is a good New Yorker review by Lauren Michele Jackson. The title of the book is excellent as well.