Book Review: Conversations With Friends

I really loved this book. I’m trying to think of sharp, clever things to say about it that will make Frances, the very clever twenty-one-year-old narrator of the novel, like me and be impressed with me, insofar as she is impressed with anyone (oh and yet she is sometimes, but not in nearly as idealistic or naïve way as one might expect from a twenty-one-year-old).

Frances and Bobbi had a schoolgirl fling and are now in college, performing poetry around Dublin’s arts/literary scene (a setting that is handled lightly, rather than being weighed down by too many references to the writers one should know) and gaining the attention of essayist and photographer Melissa, and later her husband Nick. These are the four ‘friends’ of the title and the friendships, of course, get complicated – not least when Frances and Nick begin an affair.

Press releases have paid much attention to the use of messaging and email in this book but actually there is very little of it, yet what there is always rings true. The voices are very real, and the topics touched on – from the high-brow academic politics to the everyday intimacies, by way of class difference – are handled skilfully but are never over-the-top.

And while I recognise that this is a very smart book, my love for it is emotional; I lapped it up eagerly and kept thinking about it after I’d finished. There is so much in here, ranging from tiny precise moments that capture something so beautifully to larger themes handled most pleasingly, that I just completely adored.

Conversations with Friends is published by Faber & Faber on June 1st.