Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and darkly observant. A college student in Dublin and aspiring writer, she works at a literary agency by day. At night, she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are profiled by Melissa, a well-known journalist, they enter an exotic orbit of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence.

Initially unimpressed, Frances finds herself embroiled in a risky ménage a quatre when she begins an affair with Nick, Melissa's actor husband. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new - a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment. But as Frances tries to keep control, her relationships increasingly unspool: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi.

Written with rare precision and probing intelligence, Conversations with Friends is exquisitely alive to the pleasures and inhibitions of youth.

• ISBN10: 0571333141
• ISBN13: 9780571333141
• Publish Date: 25 May 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Faber & Faber
• Edition: Main
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 272
• Language: English

Reviews

[Bianca]

I was like an empty cup, which [he] had emptied out, and now I had to look at what had spilled out of me: all my delusional beliefs about my own value and my pretensions to being a kind of person I wasn’t. While I was full of these things I couldn’t see them. Now that I was nothing, only an empty glass, I could see everything about myself.

We all crave affection from others. But often we don’t allow them to see us for who we truly are. We refuse to show our feelings, because we don’t want to be seen as weak and vulnerable. So instead, we act cold and distant, and in the process, feel miserable and unloved. Not everyone would like this book. The characters are self-absorbed and pretentious, and the relationships are unconventional. But I think that was the point. To show that because of our fear of showing our weaknesses and true selves, we somehow end up being terrible people to others. It’s a book about what it means to be kind and about accepting our vulnerabilities not as flaws, but as parts of what make us who we are.

[clementine]

I definitely understand why people wouldn't enjoy this one. The characters aren't particularly likeable; their political posturing is insufferable. There isn't really any character growth, which could be frustrating. But... I still liked it. It's full of irony and subverted expectations: that these people can talk endlessly about radical politics while still living privileged lives, that despite the novel's overt centering around conversations it's actually about the repeated, sustained failure to communicate, that the sex scenes are a bit pathetic. It's doing a lot, and I find that fascinating, although I can also see how "a novel winkingly doing clever things with smug, annoying characters" could tip to the other side of the scale. The ending is quite limp and I liked that, too, because while these characters all consider themselves intelligent and politically-radical they're actually all wet blankets who are incapable of making good choices. I kind of liked Nick despite everything, though, I must admit.

[Joséphine]

Initial thoughts: Conversations with Friends challenges the reader to put aside any prejudice and to keep an open mind. The main character, a 21-year-old university student, is distant, believes she's wholly undeserving of attention or affection, yet fancies herself a great deal more intelligent than most, all while making a series of poor choices.

This psychological exploration of her life takes the reader through ambiguous relationships, politics, religion, familial ties, mental illness, and more. These are driven by seemingly empty conversations bordering on inane that at the same time carry much more weight when you dig deeper. For better or for worse, the plot did suffer, as a result.

Listening to the audiobook helped me connect to the characters more than I would've reading the print version. It allowed me to slip into the conversations, as though I had been present in those moments myself. They reminded me of my own university days, when friends related experiences and thoughts under the stars at 3 a.m. when they knew they'd face no judgment.

Despite the unlikable nature of the characters involved, I found myself drawn into their spheres. They made me think about my own failures and triumphs in ways that only introspective books can. No doubt, this book encompassed the messiness and complications we all face in life, although in the case of Conversations with Friends, much of that could've been avoided with more good sense. Then again, if we were all perfect, what stories would be left to tell?