Alice muses about the contemporary Euro-American novel, saying, “Who can care, in short, what happens to the novel’s protagonists, when it’s happening in the context of the increasingly fast, increasingly brutal exploitation of a majority of the human species?” (95) Do novels need to address current material conditions to be contemporary? Are novels referenced in Rooney’s book (The Golden Bowl, Anna Karenina, The Karamazov Brothers, etc.) contemporary—why or why not? What about Rooney’s novel itself?

Before one even reads the novel, the title announces the idea of beauty as central to the plot. Alice theorizes that beauty invites “contemplation of the divine” (232), while Eileen tries to “preserve” beauty in her Life Book. The two women debate societal commodification of beauty and speculate that a diminished aesthetic experience is an earmark of civilization’s demise—yet no one firmly argues a definition of “beauty.” How does the author define beauty, and how is this shown in the novel?

Alice writes to Eileen, “You seem to think that aesthetic experience is, rather than merely pleasurable, somehow important. And what I want to know is: important in what way?” (230). In what ways is aestheticism crucial to developing a societal culture? Is this cruciality portrayed in the novel?