Enormous Talent

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I had already read and enjoyed 'Normal People', Sally Rooney's excellent second novel, and so I was curious to see how 'Conversations with Friends', the debut book which set everyone buzzing about her precocious talent, compared.

In many ways both novels share the same focus, namely the zigzagging muddle of relationships, the ins and outs of loving and not loving, of being desired and rejected, and of the pressures, wonders and disappointments of sex. Whereas 'Normal People' concentrates on just one couple however, through school and their student years, doing a gripping job it has to be said, I preferred 'Conversations with Friends' because its scope is so much more ambitious. Instead of two main characters there are four: two twenty-something girls, Bobbi and Frances, who are still friends despite having had an intensely passionate relationship, and an older married couple, Melissa and Nick, who play life by different rules and who are the catalysts for how the relationship between the girls develops.

Sally Rooney writes beautifully, like an English grad student but with buckets of originality and not one hint of youthful gaucheness. Indeed, the fact of how wry and at home she is exploring the bottomless quagmire of physical and emotional relationships, while still barely into her twenties, is truly remarkable. There is such poise to her style, such a sureness of touch. Nor do her quartet of characters ever follow simple or obvious plot-paths. No easy black and white answers exist for how they are feeling or the decisions they take. Instead, just as in our daily lives, their interactions constantly shift - moving apart and becoming re-entangled - through the most nuanced, and often misconstrued, signals. After all, so much of human interaction is about trying - and failing - to read each other, and Rooney captures this wonderfully.

'Conversations with Friends' is in many ways a less perfect book than the one that followed. At times Sally Rooney's four protagonists felt slightly in danger of representing certain personality types rather than being totally believable in themselves; but I definitely appreciated its broader canvas. There was also something deeply unsettling and highly credible about an older couple toying with the lives - and emotional well-being - of a much younger pair. All concerned are 'adults', well past the age of consent in all regards, and yet it was impossible to shake off the sense of something being amiss. The married pair are older and wiser. The younger two, while being feisty and hell-bent on pursuing their own ambitions, are nonetheless at an inherent disadvantage through their relative lack of experience. I am sure Sally Rooney intended this, and it was one of the many layers of psychological complexity that I enjoyed.

Endings often let novels down - all those unnaturally neat loose-ends tied off - but the conclusion of 'Conversations with Friends' managed to keep me guessing while at the same time feeling completely plausible. This is no mean feat. And Sally Rooney also happens to write brilliantly about sex - candid without being toe-curling, tender without being corny. Oh yes, this is one enormously talented novelist and I can't wait to see what she does next.



View all my reviews