2021年经济学人 《美丽世界，你在哪里》书评（1）（在线收听）

Books and Arts

文学与艺术

Book Review

书评

Irish fiction - the trouble with normality

爱尔兰小说——正常的麻烦

Sally Rooney's new novel pushes her technique to its logical extreme

萨莉·鲁尼的新小说将她的技巧推向了逻辑的极致

Beautiful World, Where Are You. By Sally Rooney.

《美丽世界，你在哪里》，作者：萨莉·鲁尼

“Nothing odd will do long,” said Samuel Johnson of Laurence Sterne’s digressive novel “Tristram Shandy”.

“任何古怪的事都不会长久，”塞缪尔·约翰逊在评价劳伦斯·斯特恩的离题小说《项狄传》时如是说。

This verdict was misguided on two counts.

这个评判的错误性体现在两个方面。

“Tristram Shandy”is now regarded as one of the great achievements of 18th-century literature; meanwhile the novel, then in its infancy, developed into a form that teems with oddity.

《项狄传》现在被视为18世纪文学的伟大成就之一；另一方面，这部小说在当时还处于萌芽阶段，却发展成了一种充满怪诞的形式。

It is a repository of peculiar characters, settings and situations, flights of idiosyncratic language and jags of startling perception.

它是一座宝库，充满奇特人物、场景和情节，不寻常的奇幻语言，以及令人吃惊的洞察力。

By contrast, as their titles suggest, “Conversations with Friends” and “Normal People”, Sally Rooney’s first two books, focused on everyday aspects of life — friendship, romance, growing up — which they chronicled in limpid but unflashy prose.

相比之下，正如书名所示——《聊天记录》和《正常人》，莎莉·鲁尼的前两本书专注于生活的日常方面——友谊、浪漫、成长——它们被编织进简洁而朴实的文字中。

Both were acclaimed by critics, became bestsellers and have been adapted for television.

这两本书都受到了评论家们的赞赏，成为了畅销书，并被改编成电视剧。

In Ms Rooney’s stories, normality is not merely her subject matter.

在鲁尼的故事中，“正常”不仅仅是她的主题。

It is also a virtue to be cultivated, perhaps even the key to happiness.

它也是一种需要培养的美德，甚至也许是幸福的关键。

“He’s quite normal,” says one character of another’s religious faith in the Irish author’s third novel; “he won’t try to convert you or anything.”

“他很正常，”在这位爱尔兰作家的第三部小说中，一个人物谈到另一个人的宗教信仰时说：“他不会试图改变你的信仰或者其它什么。”

The outline of “Beautiful World, Where Are You” will seem familiar to readers of its predecessors.

《美丽世界，你在哪里》的故事梗概对于读过前面几本书的读者来说似乎很熟悉。

Alice, a successful but troubled novelist, has moved to the Irish coast where she meets Felix, a warehouse worker.

爱丽丝是一位成功但麻烦缠身的小说家，她搬到爱尔兰海岸，在那里她遇到了仓库工人菲利克斯。

Her best friend Eileen, dismally house-sharing in Dublin, is tortured by her infatuation with Simon, whom she has known since childhood.

她最好的朋友艾琳在都柏林与人合租，情绪低落。艾琳从小就认识西蒙，而她对西蒙的迷恋折磨着她。

The story vibrates to their romantic havering.

故事围绕他们的爱情徘徊展开。

But compared with the work of Jane Austen — which Ms Rooney admires, and in which courtship drives the plot and the climax is marriage — her tales of messy modern love follow improvised patterns.

但与简·奥斯丁的作品相比——鲁尼很欣赏简·奥斯丁的作品，在简·奥斯丁的作品中，求爱推动情节，婚姻成就高潮——她的混乱现代爱情故事遵循即兴创作的模式。

Sex, which she describes unsqueamishly and arrestingly, is a beginning not a destination, and tends to lead to an enervating stasis (male domination and female masochism crop up frequently).

她对性的描述毫不拘谨且引人注目，性只是开始，不是终点。性爱往往会陷入一种萎靡的停滞状态（男性主宰和女性受虐狂经常出现）。

Relationships meander in a state of quantum irresolution, the parties likely to have different perceptions of whether they are off or on.

感情关系在大量的犹豫不决中徘徊，双方可能对他们是否在一起都有不同看法。