Sally Rooney's “Beautiful World, Where Are You” Will Not Get a Screen Adaptation: 'Not Where I Belonged'

The Irish author's third novel will not be following in the footsteps of 'Normal People' and 'Conversations with Friends'

Sally Rooney’s third novel will not be following in the footsteps of Normal People and Conversations with Friends.

In an interview with The New York Times published Sept. 21, the author, 33, shared that she has no plans to adapt Beautiful World, Where Are You for the small screen.

“So far, I have decided not to accept any offers to option the rights for that book,” she said. “I felt like it was just time to take a break from that and let the book be its own thing for a while.”

The book, which came out in 2021, tells the story of Alice and Eileen, two best friends on the cusp of their thirties who find themselves on very different trajectories. As the summer approaches, they exchange emails about art, friendship, the world around them and the complicated love affairs unfolding in their own lives.

Rooney also shared that she found the worldwide attention the TV adaptation of Normal People garnered “a lot” and the experience made her realize that she wants to center her focus purely on the written word.

Related: With Intermezzo, Sally Rooney Is All Grown Up: ‘I Didn't Want to Be 'the Young Novelist''

“The experience of working on the first one [Normal People] had been, in so many ways, amazing — the team of people involved in it. But it did also feel like a really big job,” she said. “Then, when the show was broadcast, that felt like a lot, in terms of the amount of discourse that it generated and the amount of media attention. I felt that world was not where I belonged. I felt like, okay, now I know that my books are where I belong, and that’s all that I want to be doing."

Normal People, released on Hulu in April 2020, became an instant hit during the COVID-19 pandemic and skyrocketed the careers of its stars Paul Mescal, a 2023 Oscar nominee, and Daisy Edgar-Jones.

The series was adapted from Rooney’s 2018 Booker Prize nominee that tells the story of a complicated romance that develops between two students, Marianne (Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Mescal), from high school through to college.

Meanwhile, Conversations with Friends, Rooney’s debut novel released in 2017, got its screen adaptation in 2022 starring Joe Alwyn, Jemima Kirke, Alison Oliver and Sasha Lane. Rooney told The New York Times that the reason she chose “not to be so involved” in the adaptation of Conversations with Friends was because she was working on her third novel, at the time.

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Related: Listen to Normal People Actor Éanna Hardwicke Narrate Sally Rooney’s Forthcoming Novel Intermezzo (Exclusive)

Rooney’s much-anticipated fourth novel, Intermezzo, is set to be released on Sept. 24 and focuses on two brothers, Peter and Ivan, as they grieve the death of their father while navigating very different romantic relationships as well.

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“I’m aware that people think that my work is heavily autobiographical, and in fact, it isn’t," the Irish star told The New York Times of the novel. "It felt like they were just fictional characters, like all my other fictional characters, and I was intrigued by them. So the question of gender felt very secondary, but there were moments where I thought, ‘Have I got any of this right?’”

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