In Sally Rooney’s new novel Beautiful World, Where Are You, one of the main characters, Eileen, attends a poetry reading hosted by the literary magazine where she works. The theme for this event is “crisis”. Some poets use the prompt to navel-gaze, reading works about personal upheaval; one “talked for ten minutes about the difficulties of finding a publisher and only had time to read one poem”. Later, Eileen tells her friend Simon that “we had a Trump poem”. The very thought makes him “earnestly wish for the embrace of death”.
Here, Rooney illustrates an unfortunate but glaring truth – the majority of fiction that attempts to speak to the present moment is embarrassing. With its overtly contemporary references, sanctimonious now-more-than-ever tone and art-in-a-time-of-crisis faux-urgency, the political novel can be an excruciating experience.
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