I had good memories of her previous books, but this one was quite boring, I eventually skimmed the last hundred pages. Lots of convoluted drama and angst around two brothers in mirror relationships (the young maybe autistic chess player with the thirty-something divorcée, the thirty-something rich lawyer with the young lost girl and her OF account and his ex from high school).

One thing to note about Rooney's universe is that she doesn't try and hide her upper-middle-class characters in the shroud of normalcy, as it is often done (I mean, it's pretty hard to do when your characters quote Wittgenstein). This assumed setting is also a problem, as the issues and solutions they meet are those of their class: their tormented fight against the so very oppressive norms that attack couples with a 10/15-year gap*, and the obvious solutions -- becoming braver in the hope of making the world more tolerant, opening ourselves to polyamory and hoping for the best, time will tell, etc. To add to the drama (and I suspect, to justify the high emotional volatility of the two brothers), they have just buried their father.

It felt a bit like the "how is cyberbullying a real thing" meme. I couldn't take them seriously, and they looked more like people in search of a justification to suffer than people trying to find a way out of suffering. In that regard, Rooney's characters are very human and quite annoying.

*Some people in the village appear to make comments; one mother is critical. I might have missed other attempts on their fundamental rights while skimming through the end of the book.