15 ratings • 5 reviews
15 ratings • 5 reviews
Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
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Come on Eileen…… pleasantly surprised there was a happily ever after though!
(Really need the ability to do half stars because this one is yet another 3.5 for me)
The story itself was enjoyable, although some of the conversations/interactions felt odd. Despite that, I swiftly felt like I was getting to know the main characters well and to understand their inner workings to some degree. I felt for each of them in moments of reflection and vulnerability. By the last few chapters, though, I was feeling less patient.
I was taken by surprise but interested in the bits of commentary on sexual identity, faith, celebrity, society at large, as well as the more mundane elements of life in tandem with the bigger picture of what it has always been to be human.