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Conversations with Friends

Sally Rooney (Goodreads Author)

3.81 · Rating details · 152,595 ratings · 11,996 reviews

A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple.

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Love ...more

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Kindle Edition, 304 pages

Published July 11th 2017 by Hogarth (first published May 25th 2017)

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Aug 23, 2017 Jill rated it it was amazing

I’ve been thinking a lot about aging lately: the way our perspective changes and how our need for stability, trust and healthy relationships become so much more valued than intoxicating, crash-and-burn emotional roller-coasters of our younger years.

I say this as means of introduction because while reading Conversations with Friends, it occurred to me that those readers who are not familiar with the confusing yet exhilarating times of poor choices mixed with a great deal of egotism and sense of i I’ve been thinking a lot about aging lately: the way our perspective changes and how our need for stability, trust and healthy relationships become so much more valued than intoxicating, crash-and-burn emotional roller-coasters of our younger years.

I say this as means of introduction because while reading Conversations with Friends, it occurred to me that those readers who are not familiar with the confusing yet exhilarating times of poor choices mixed with a great deal of egotism and sense of invulnerability may not like or relate to these characters. It’s easy to miss the precision dance that Sally Rooney is performing here.

But then is this book about the poor choices of youth or about one particularly fractured character who is destined to keep making those choices into adulthood? The book centers on two girls in their early 20s – our narrator Frances and Bobbi, her best friend and one-time lover. Together, they make the acquaintance of a couple a decade older: the composed and successful Melissa and her handsome husband Nick, an emotionally fragile actor whose career seems to be stalled despite an abundance of talent. Inevitably, Frances and Nick hook up, wrecking more damage on their own world and on the worlds of everyone around them.

The “conversations” alluded to in the title are eloquently expressed but never get to the heart of things. Frances, who is unable to admit her love for Nick—even to herself—says, “We can sleep together if you want, but you should know I’m only doing it ironically.” Or later: “I just don’t have feelings concerning whether you fxxk your wife or not. It’s not an emotive topic for me.” Of course it is, and the constant self-harm Frances imposes on herself—picking furiously at her nails, biting her inner cheek, cutting herself—reveals the extent that her repression is harming her.

As Frances whirls in place, the product of an alcoholic father, an enabler mother, and her own making, the core of Frances reveals itself: she feels like a damaged person who deserves nothing, believing that those she loves are exalted and somehow special. “Suffering wouldn’t make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn’t make me special,” she reflects at one point. To reveal oneself is dangerous in a world that often conspires against you. This is one of the most interesting psychological profiles I’ve read in a long time with an ending that made me gasp. ...more

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Jun 09, 2017 Esil rated it liked it

Shelves: netgalley

A very tepid 3 stars. Conversations with Friends is another one of those books about not particularly nice people entangled in awkward relationships. I've certainly read many books of this nature that I've found clever and quite enjoyed, but this one was just ok. Frances and Bobbi -- both young women who used to be in a relationship with each other -- become entangled with somewhat older heterosexual couple Nick and Melissa. It's all told from Frances' perspective. She doesn't seem to be able to ...more

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Dec 29, 2016 Sam rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-reads

I didn't really respond well to Conversations with Friends. The writing itself is quite good in terms of realistic dialogue and description, but I found all of the characters entirely unlikable and hard to empathize with, very few with any positive animating traits, mostly just self-absorbed, narcissistic, occasionally cruel and capricious. Either in addition to or because I didn't respond to the characters, I also didn't respond to the plot well: the stakes seemed very low, there seemed to be l I didn't really respond well to Conversations with Friends. The writing itself is quite good in terms of realistic dialogue and description, but I found all of the characters entirely unlikable and hard to empathize with, very few with any positive animating traits, mostly just self-absorbed, narcissistic, occasionally cruel and capricious. Either in addition to or because I didn't respond to the characters, I also didn't respond to the plot well: the stakes seemed very low, there seemed to be little personal growth from any of the characters (despite this being a story entirely focused on people rather than situations), and when more or less the entire main cast is unlikable, it can be hard to invest in an outcome. Because the craft itself was strong, I'd give this 2 stars and say "it's ok" overall, but I wouldn't recommend it personally.

The central conceit is two twenty-something friends and former lovers, Frances and Bobbi, get pulled into the orbit of photographer Melissa and her actor husband Nick. Then France and Nick become drawn to one another, and begin an affair that leads to uncomfortable situations and confrontations with Bobbi, Melissa, and their friends and family members. It's set in Dublin, Ireland, but the way it's written and the poetry-art-acting cultural trifecta it hits, it may as well be set in California. It didn't feel particularly Irish at all, so I was a bit lost on sense of place and specificity.

We see things from Frances' perspective, which might be part of the difficulty with this read for me. Frances is entirely selfish: she begins the book that way, and aside from maybe inches of character growth, she also ends the book that way. We're told how intelligent she is, but she seems to be perpetually blushing, blundering into things, acting cruelly and capriciously when it suits her, and retreating to dark corners to cut herself when she's incapable of expressing her true feelings. It didn't help that Frances is also living off an allowance through her father, not feeling pressed at all to support herself for much of the novel, content to wallow in her feelings for Nick and assert dominance and indifference to him to disguise her growing dependence and obsession with him. (They say it's love, but honestly these characters are all so selfish it's easy to think that they say it's love but it's not.) Nick meanwhile is a somewhat caddish, sad, broken and oppressed man, mildly unhappy with his life but without real power or impetus to change it. Not all characters need to be likable in order to enjoy a novel about them - I can think of plenty of anti-heroes and somewhat nasty characters that are delightful to read - but I struggled greatly trying to empathize with these characters, finding very little compelling about their personalities and their decisions, but also not being poorly behaved enough to be completely disgusted with them. That made it very difficult for me to engage and be entertained or informed while reading. Bobbi is a decent side character and has a greater, more complex personality, while Melissa never comes across as more than a controlling, dominating woman (possibly because we're in Frances' perspective, and Bobbi is her former lover and best friend, while Melissa is her rival for Nick's physical and emotional affection and attention).

When the focal point is an illicit, uncertain relationship and the rest centers on other relationships spiraling and changing in reaction, you don't want the writing to put distance between you and the characters. As good as Rooney's craft is, I did feel as though I was peering into their lives and their messy actions but at arms length, and again hard to say if the writing was responsible or my disinterest in the characters. I would want to feel immersed in the action, pulled in and maybe disgusted or titillated or both, but fundamentally unable to look away (very much how I felt reading White Fur). With Conversations with Friends, I was just bored, feeling the distance and not caring that neither myself nor the author was taking pains to close the gap. And the scenes of sex and intimacy did not feel charged or challenged; they seemed pathetic and pitiable, but in the most banal way, so I had little sympathy for Frances or Nick as they embarked on their affair.

There's not much more to it: again, it's a novel of relationships, and there aren't huge plot elements or set pieces or massive emotional bombs. It quietly crawls along, never fully climaxes, and resulted in a sort of ambivalent ending that made a lot of sense to me based on the selfishness of these characters. I do believe Sally Rooney has writing talent, and there are some good paragraphs and dialogue in terms of craft. But I could not connect with this book at all, and was too bored by the characters and wearied by the proceedings to hate them. Again, the writing was good enough that I think it warrants two stars, and perhaps other people will find more that speaks to them from this book. But it was absolutely not for me. ...more

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May 23, 2019 emma rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned, non-ya, literary-fiction, gorgeous-covers, diverse, i-love-these-characters, favorites-2019, comments, couldn-t-wait-to-read, favorites

when you see me and lily rereading this every month in 2021, mind your business

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reread this in its entirety on a plane to be on my main character sh*t

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what has to be wrong with a person for Conversations with Friends to be a comfort reread for them? asking for myself

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I have a debilitating rereading problem.

It’s reached a concerning point -- seemingly 1 in 3 or 4 books I read is actually a reread. Previously I was way too picky about adding books to my to-read list t ...more

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Mar 26, 2018 Barry Pierce rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2018, 21st-century

The narrator of Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends at one point states that she never wants to work.

I had no plans as to my future financial sustainability: I never wanted to earn money for doing anything. [...] I'd felt that my disinterest in wealth was ideologically healthy. I'd checked what the average yearly income would be if the gross world product were evenly divided among everyone, and according to Wikipedia it would be $16, 100. I saw no reason, political or financial, ever to ma ...more

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Jun 30, 2019 Elle (ellexamines) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: z-2019reads, 5-star, favorite-relationships, literary-fiction, author-love, favorite-characters, catharsis-dot-mp3, trope-subversion, z-2017reads, z-2019favs

There’s a cliche in reviewing where you say something along these lines: “I wouldn’t like these characters in real life, but I found them compelling.” See, I don’t think that’s why this book works. I think this book works because in real life we would probably like these characters; respect their talent, find them interesting if at times flawed or condescending, look up to them on a level at which we would at times resent them and at times want to be them. It’s just that none of us would ever kn ...more

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Nov 19, 2018 Rachel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018, favorites, own, literary-fiction, to-reread-one-day, irish, disaster-women

This was stupidly good. After recently loving Rooney's sophomore novel Normal People my expectations for Conversations With Friends were high, though I was also a bit wary; in these situations I'm always afraid an author's debut isn't going to live up. I needn't have worried. This was perfect from start to finish. You know that feeling when you miss a stair and your stomach lurches briefly before you land - this was that sensation in book form.

Once again I was impressed with Rooney's writing; it This was stupidly good. After recently loving Rooney's sophomore novel Normal People my expectations for Conversations With Friends were high, though I was also a bit wary; in these situations I'm always afraid an author's debut isn't going to live up. I needn't have worried. This was perfect from start to finish. You know that feeling when you miss a stair and your stomach lurches briefly before you land - this was that sensation in book form.

Once again I was impressed with Rooney's writing; it's simple and seemingly effortless, but the kind of natural and conversational cadence she achieves is no easy feat. The simultaneous intelligence and lack of life experience of the narrator, Frances, were captured so convincingly; from the start this was a person that I wanted to understand, whose head I wanted to inhabit briefly. Sally Rooney writes about interpersonal dynamics with such skill and ease and sharp observation, and that was the shining point of this novel, but whenever Frances looked inward, those moments were also captured with the same unnerving clarity. I related to Frances and I didn't; I saw bits of myself in her and I found bits of her unreachable. But Rooney made me care, she earned my investment as I watched with sympathy and frustration and anxiety as Frances attempted to navigate an awkward, ill-thought-out affair with an older married man, a dynamic which only complicated her limited understanding of love, class, status, artistic freedom, and belonging.

If you can't handle books about unlikable, selfish people, you aren't going to enjoy this, and in that sense alone I don't necessarily believe this book transcends its premise. It's about unlikable, selfish people, many of whom are blind to their privilege. It's not about the kind of people you want to be, or want to be friends with. But if you're willing to sacrifice likability for realism, and an unpredictable plot for moments of startling self-reflection, this is the book for you. I actually ended up preferring this to Normal People, but both are a solid 5 stars and I am simply delighted that Sally Rooney's books have entered my life. ...more

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May 02, 2018 Sarah Jessica Parker added it

This book is incredible! Read it in one day.

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Sep 02, 2017 Danielle ❤️ Pretty Mess Reading ❤️ rated it it was ok

**2 STARS**

*shoulder shrug* Unfiltered review https://wp.me/p7ZSCH-3dC

Reading the synopsis of the book had me excited. I just knew I was going to love this book. It sounded like I was going to get a little bit of YA and NA combined into one brilliant masterpiece. Sadly, for me, that did not happen.

I want to start with the first and deepest reason why I never connected with this book. It’s a big one, lovers.

There are no quotation marks. It was extremely annoying reading a book when I couldn’t tel ...more

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Jul 21, 2018 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing

Audiobook... read by
Alice McMahon

The audio-narration was wonderfully alive an addictive. Granted this isn’t exactly a book a parent would ever recommend to their young adult- 20-ish old child - daughter or son...as this is not an educational book on inspiring relationships —
But for me — as a 66 year old married fart who values honesty- with little-to-zero respect for adultery...( consented is up to the couple -‘lies’- destroy others)....
Regardless.....
I enjoyed the ‘conversations’.. the funny/ ...more

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Feb 15, 2019 Hannah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: would-take-on-an-island-with-me, fiction, loved-it

I have spent the last days periodically exclaiming “God, what a book” (or more correctly, because I do speak German in my real life, “Gott, was ein Buch!” or “Dieses Buch!”). I am feeling vaguely guilty for having given other books five stars because this book is just so much more than most of those. I am in no way objective in my absolute adoration and I don’t think I can adequately articulate how very brilliant I thought this was, so stick with me while I squeal and talk in superlatives.

I drag I have spent the last days periodically exclaiming “God, what a book” (or more correctly, because I do speak German in my real life, “Gott, was ein Buch!” or “Dieses Buch!”). I am feeling vaguely guilty for having given other books five stars because this book is just so much more than most of those. I am in no way objective in my absolute adoration and I don’t think I can adequately articulate how very brilliant I thought this was, so stick with me while I squeal and talk in superlatives.

I dragged my feet reading this book because the reviews are all over the place and it could have been so obnoxious (and some people think it is!): I mean, a book focussing on four fairly privileged young people making themselves miserable? A book where a thirty-something married man starts an affair with a 20-year-old college student? But this book hit me in all the right places. Rooney expertly weaves her tale, her characterization is sharp enough to cut, and her protagonist is a flawed piece of brilliance. Frances grounds this story in a way that worked exceedingly well for me and I found her, while infuriating, insanely relatable and incredibly true to life. Other reviewers have characterized her as unlikable – but I could not disagree more. She behaves stupidly, sure, but she is also lost and sad and sharply book smart while lacking emotional intelligence and I found her so very compelling. She is both the more active part of the relationship while also letting things just happen without taking action. She is incapable of communicating effectively while still being observant.

Rooney also manages something incredible here: she made me feel for the thirty-year-old man sleeping with a much younger woman and lying to his wife. Nick could have been a walking cliché, but Rooney made him so much more well-rounded while never flinching away from the fact that he behaves atrociously. Every single one of the four main characters felt real in a way that fictional characters so rarely do, precisely because Rooney lets them be contradictory and, yes, sometimes unpleasant. But for me this unpleasantness never overshadowed the sympathy I felt for all of them.

I cannot see this book not topping my best of the year list, which on the one hand is great, on the other hand it is only March and I have a whole lot Women’s Prize reading ahead of me. I will read everything Rooney had ever written or will ever write, starting with Normal People when it’ll arrive this weekend.

On reread:
Still a perfect book.

You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog. ...more

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Mar 28, 2019 Michael rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019

Compelling and cool, Conversations with Friends places millennial malaise and an unexpected love affair against the backdrop of summertime Dublin. The fast-paced plot follows a pair of privileged college-aged performance poets and exes, Bobbi and Frances, as they become entangled with an older, slightly famous married couple, Nick and Melissa. The bulk of the story concerns the rise and fall of Nick and Frances's romance. The two flirt by messenger, bonding over their shared lack of direction, a ...more

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Jan 22, 2017 Blair rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017-release, read-on-kindle, first-novels, contemporary, netgalley

I think this book might have worked better for me if I'd read it before Elif Batuman's The Idiot. Batuman and Rooney give their narrators similar voices: sharp, clear and deadpan but excessively self-aware. Both use email conversations to map out the development of a relationship. Both novels are told from the perspective of naive, supposedly intelligent young women who appear largely passive, falling into particular courses of action more because of the lack of a viable alternative than any gre I think this book might have worked better for me if I'd read it before Elif Batuman's The Idiot. Batuman and Rooney give their narrators similar voices: sharp, clear and deadpan but excessively self-aware. Both use email conversations to map out the development of a relationship. Both novels are told from the perspective of naive, supposedly intelligent young women who appear largely passive, falling into particular courses of action more because of the lack of a viable alternative than any great impetus on their part. When I say 'supposedly intelligent' here I'm really only referring to Rooney's Frances: she seems little more than a poser when juxtaposed with Batuman's protagonist Selin, who is imbued with such palpable intellectual power that her observations and ideas crackle off the page.

The plot follows Frances and Bobbi, her best friend and ex-girlfriend, as they become entangled with an alluring older couple. Initially this is mainly because Bobbi is pursuing Melissa, an artist, but soon Frances enters into an affair with Nick, Melissa's actor husband. The whole story is told from Frances' point of view.

This is a character-driven novel, and for me, the characters were the problem. On a personal level, I hated (most of) them; on a critical level I felt they lacked the necessary depth to make the plot work (in particular, I did not believe in Melissa and Nick as a thirtysomething married couple). When I think about it, Frances is true to a lot of what I remember about being 21 – her thoughts are self-absorbed, self-flagellating and gullible, her conversations filled with mildly endearing, very performative intellectual posturing – but for whatever reason, she made me roll my eyes with exasperation rather than feel nostalgic for that period of my own life.

In contrast to the likes of The Idiot and Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter, which offer fresh, provocative and delightful reinterpretations of the coming-of-age plot, Conversations with Friends is the sort of book that makes me think maybe I should stop reading fiction about people younger than me. Almost everyone in it is irredeemably narcissistic, pretentious and nowhere near as smart as they think they are. I wanted to slap Frances and punch Nick. The disproportionate ire aimed at stories about women who have affairs has long been a pet hate of mine, but in this case, I could find absolutely no sympathy for Frances and just felt irritated every time she got bogged down in her emotional distress over Nick. Unfortunately, this makes up an awful lot of the book.

The narrative is always best when it moves away from Frances and Nick's relationship. An episode in which Frances is taken to hospital is lucidly realised, and in general Rooney's descriptions of sickness and pain are powerful. Bobbi is intriguing, though the tight focus on Frances doesn't quite allow enough room for the reader to see the charismatic figure other characters treat her as. (I'd have preferred the story – or at least part of it – to be told from Bobbi's perspective.) So yeah – I loved Rooney's writing here, she's so talented, and incredibly young to have written a novel so poised and polished. Despite the issues I had with Conversations with Friends, I'm really looking forward to reading more from her. I just hope she writes about less insufferable people next time.

I received an advance review copy of Conversations with Friends from the publisher through NetGalley.

TinyLetter | Linktree ...more

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May 17, 2019 Maxwell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned, novel-company, ireland

I really admire Sally Rooney’s writing. Her stories aren’t perfect, just like her characters, but they feel very authentic.

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Apr 11, 2020 Thomas rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own-physical, lgbtq, realistic-fiction, adult-fiction

My controversial take on this book is that it could also be titled Self-absorbed White People have Feelings Too. Before I get into that take, I do think Sally Rooney accomplishes quite a lot with her debut novel Conversations with Friends. The book follows Frances and her best friend Bobbi, who become entangled with a married couple, Nick and Melissa. Frances and Nick begin an affair which gets intense, and much of these characters’ relationships with one another thicken when Bobbi and Melissa f My controversial take on this book is that it could also be titled Self-absorbed White People have Feelings Too. Before I get into that take, I do think Sally Rooney accomplishes quite a lot with her debut novel Conversations with Friends. The book follows Frances and her best friend Bobbi, who become entangled with a married couple, Nick and Melissa. Frances and Nick begin an affair which gets intense, and much of these characters’ relationships with one another thicken when Bobbi and Melissa find out.

Though this set up may sound like a recipe for a pretty shallow book, Rooney’s writing makes the story incredibly interesting. Her dialogue is sharp and compelling even though her characters’ lives are kinda shallow, she describes her characters’ interior lives really well, and because of these qualities I literally stayed up until 1am to finish this novel last night. Rooney also creates a complex and intriguing non-monogamous relationship set up between her four main characters which speaks to the potential of love outside of traditional heterosexual monogamy. Finally, I loved, loved, loved Bobbi as a character, perhaps in large part because she reminded me a lot of me with her self-assuredness and social justice barbs. Kudos to Rooney for creating such a cool, iconic best friend for Frances.

The characters’ lack of growth limits my praise for this novel. Rooney does a great job of making pretty narcissistic characters interesting. Even beyond making them interesting, she humanizes them, especially our main character Frances. There are some moments of emotional depth and insight in Conversations with Friends, and when they hit, they’re pretty rad. Yet, I wanted so much more from Frances and from how Rooney constructed Frances’s relationship with Nick. Frances is self-effacing, rather self-centered, and cruel to people she is close to. Her relationship with Nick only heightens these attributes. Toward the end of the book, there’s some acknowledgement that Frances is this way and a few pages of some growth (e.g., apologizing to people she’s hurt), yet I wanted more from her. To be honest, I’m not sure how fair it is that I wanted more from her – like maybe it’s “okay” that she’s kind of a jerk because perhaps that’s how some people are, jerks who at some point become a little less like jerks yet still are emotionally messy. For me, though, the sophistication of the writing and the overall style of characterization obscured what could have been deeper moments of growth for Frances, as well as for Nick.

Overall, a super intriguing novel. Even though I didn’t love it I respect its quality enough to the point where I am still considering reading Rooney’s second book, Normal People. In the hands of any other author, I probably would’ve despised this book and felt that it was 300 pages of people with awful interpersonal skills who lack self-awareness. And while I do feel that this book is 300 pages of people with awful interpersonal skills who lack self-awareness, Rooney’s talent makes the story and characters shine in their own self-absorbed way. ...more

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Jun 30, 2019 Adam Dalva rated it really liked it

Very, very strong, though I prefer the ping-ponging perspectives of the wonderful NORMAL PEOPLE. Rooney has such an uncanny knack for love squares and cliffhangers, and you'll fly through this, as I did. Her affectless prose is startling, though CWF has a few linguistic flourishes, especially toward the end, that slightly imbalance the text. She is a master of plot, of the importance of gestures, and desire. The one other thing about this book is that the lead repeatedly makes the same mistake i ...more

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Jan 25, 2020 Susanne Strong rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-authors, goodreads-best-of-list-2020, library-book, 2020-five-star-books

5 Stars.

Entanglements, my oh my!

“Conversations with Friends” by Sally Rooney had me ALMOST from the get go. At first, admittedly, I wondered WHAT in HECK, I was listening too. Frances… rambling on about her goings on… her trysts with her school friend Bobbi.. which went from steamy to platonic very quickly. Frances’s description of her and Bobbi’s poetry readings and a woman named Melissa’s immediate intrigue in them and then BOOM. Somewhere along the way I began listening with interest, which t ...more

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May 27, 2017 Marchpane rated it liked it

Shelves: arc-from-netgalley

Conversations with Friends (the title and sunny cover are fairly misleading) is a stark, reflective novel which asks the reader to inhabit the mind of 21 year old poet and college student, Frances. She appears to be coolly detached from her feelings, at least in the beginning, and analytical to the point of neurosis.

We get a sense of Frances' excruciating self-consciousness at the start of the novel, when she and her ex-girlfriend Bobbi are invited back to the home of Melissa, a "slightly famous Conversations with Friends (the title and sunny cover are fairly misleading) is a stark, reflective novel which asks the reader to inhabit the mind of 21 year old poet and college student, Frances. She appears to be coolly detached from her feelings, at least in the beginning, and analytical to the point of neurosis.

We get a sense of Frances' excruciating self-consciousness at the start of the novel, when she and her ex-girlfriend Bobbi are invited back to the home of Melissa, a "slightly famous" writer/photographer they've just met. In the taxi, Frances is "ready for the challenge of visiting a stranger's home, already preparing compliments and certain facial expressions to make myself seem charming". Upon arriving, she makes a point of deciding to "remember everything about her home, so I could describe it to our other friends later and Bobbi could agree".

The novel follows her and her artsy circle from poetry readings to dinner parties to a holiday at a beach house in France. The plot, such as it is, mainly deals with sexual entanglements and jealousies within the group.

These characters are disconnected, both emotionally and in the literal, digital sense. Tinder makes a brief appearance, and there's one mention of Facebook, but otherwise this book could almost be set at any time in the past 20 years. Communication is via email and instant messaging, and there's no sense of the hyper connected, social media-fuelled world we live in now. Presumably this was deliberate (the author is 25), but it just feels anachronistic and at odds with the book's realism.

Frances' musings are alternately mundane, lambent, and pretentious, as befits a young person with more intelligence than experience. It's not clear whether she's become any wiser by the end, for all her introspection, but I guess that's not the point. It's more about exploring the nature of relationships and the power dynamics within them.

This novel, like its characters, is pessimistic and aloof, as well as incisive and real. Unnerving, and occasionally scraping close to the bone, and you've got to respect writing that can achieve that. ...more

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Dec 16, 2017 Bruno rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: uk, contemporanea

WHO EVEN WRITES SO MANY EMAILS IRL?? DON'T THEY HAVE WHATSAPP IN IRELAND? ...more

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Mar 05, 2019 Lucy Langford rated it really liked it · review of another edition

4.5****

Things and people moved around me, taking positions in obscure hierarchies, participating in systems I didn’t know about and never would. A complex network of objects and concepts. You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.

I adored my reread of this book and within the last 100 pages I felt almost grief while witnessing Frances’ consciousness. This book offered up truth and insight into the female consciousness and dissected ...more

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Jan 17, 2020 Blaine rated it really liked it

Shelves: e-book, 2020

I ran my finger along his collarbone and said: I can’t remember if I thought about this at the beginning. How it was doomed to end unhappily.

He nodded, looking at me. I did, he said, I just thought it would be worth it.

Conversations with Friends is a really good book, and a great debut novel. Frances, Bobbi, Melissa, and Nick are fully realized characters, and every page shines with Ms. Rooney’s immense writing talent.

I do wish I had read it before I read Normal People. Both books explore simil ...more

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Jun 20, 2020 Johann (jobis89) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“Suffering wouldn’t make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn’t make me special.”

Last night I had a video call with some friends as we’ve been reading this for our book club. There was an audible gasp when I said that based on two books alone, Sally Rooney is now one of my most favourite authors. She is just THAT impressive to me. Her grasp on human nature is phenomenal, the way she takes what can be seen as relatively “normal” relationships and picks them apart and lays them bare con “Suffering wouldn’t make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn’t make me special.”

Last night I had a video call with some friends as we’ve been reading this for our book club. There was an audible gasp when I said that based on two books alone, Sally Rooney is now one of my most favourite authors. She is just THAT impressive to me. Her grasp on human nature is phenomenal, the way she takes what can be seen as relatively “normal” relationships and picks them apart and lays them bare continues to astound me. Her characters are so real and relatable, and her stories are the equivalent of peering in through windows into other people’s lives. Basically I could write an essay on why I love Sally Rooney so much.

Conversations With Friends follows Frances and the numerous relationships she has in her life. There’s her best friend, and former girlfriend, Bobbi. And then there’s the married couple that they become close friends with, Melissa and Nick. What follows is a complex love rectangle(?) comprising all 4 characters.

Rooney’s novels are character-driven, and her characters are really where she excels. They are not always likeable, often making poor decisions, but they are 100% authentic. Frances is fascinating - she is intent on coming off as cold and emotionless, when she is anything but. All her feelings are repressed, as she is afraid to show her vulnerability and would rather travel down the path towards self-destruction.

As expected there are a lot of conversations between friends, as they share their observations and theories on many topics. Rooney’s dialogue flows freely, even if it does make me wonder why I don’t have such intellectual conversations with my own friends.

Endometriosis is also discussed in this one, which I appreciated because it hasn’t featured in any books I’ve read and it’s a chronic illness that requires more awareness. Sometimes as women we think we just gotta battle through these agonising periods, but if it gets THIS bad, please ask your doctor about it.

Overall, LOVED IT, but Normal People remains my favourite. Now the wait begins for another Rooney novel. 4.5 stars. ...more

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Jun 13, 2017 Jessica rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: won-on-librarything, favorites

I received this book for free through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers.

This book gave me so many feels. It was a roller coaster of emotions. For some reason I really connected to this book. There was something so captivating about it.

I felt like this book would make a great movie or miniseries on HBO. There's something really special and different about it that would translate well to the screen.

The characters felt very real and I think that's what I liked most about it. I loved Nick. He was so d ...more

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Mar 12, 2020 Dave Schaafsma rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-loved-2020, fiction-21st-century

“You’re twenty-one, said Melissa. You should be disastrously unhappy.

I’m working on it, I said.”

Conversations Among Friends by Sally Rooney I listened to because—conversations, talk, duh—and because I had just read and taught her second book, Normal People. I have to say I loved both books, but I am also quick to say that the central female character in each book is very similar, physically quite a bit like what Rooney appears to looks like. The two main characters share some deeply concerning p “You’re twenty-one, said Melissa. You should be disastrously unhappy.

I’m working on it, I said.”

Conversations Among Friends by Sally Rooney I listened to because—conversations, talk, duh—and because I had just read and taught her second book, Normal People. I have to say I loved both books, but I am also quick to say that the central female character in each book is very similar, physically quite a bit like what Rooney appears to looks like. The two main characters share some deeply concerning personality characteristics that made me stop and want to text Rooney to see if she was not in fact sending us all a cry-for-help message in these books about her own self-destructive tendencies. I know, I know about that author/narrator fallacy. Books of fiction may not necessarily reveal anything at all about the author, but it gave me pause, I tell you.

In this one Frances—as did Marianne in Normal People—seems naïve, lost, ever losing herself, disappearing into herself, involved in self-damaging sexual behavior, at the same time making shallow precocious college girl feminist/anti-capitalist critiques of the very social swamps she swims in. We really do, I promise you, come to like these women, as we can see how vulnerable and lost they are. Young women, coming of age without a map, without a guide.

You can read thousands of other reviews for better plot summaries, but the story here is that college student Frances, recently dumped by her girlfriend Bobbi but still her best friend, is not working and writing a little and involved in witty conversations with people she knows about feminism and very involved in various social media, performing at local spoken word events with Bobbi. Frances meets a (married) actor and has an affair with him, her first sex with a man. She’s 21, he is 32. Somewhere along the way Frances and Bobbi are invited to France by Nick and Melissa for a summer vacation. Nick is a pretty successful actor, Melissa is a pretty successful photographer, Bobbi and Frances are college poets and they don’t seem to do much all day but text each other. So this is a portrait of academic/class privilege, of young people not knowing what they are doing, damaging others, damaging each other, taking themselves altogether too seriously.

Not convinced yet? Hmm, let’s see. The people remind me a bit of Whit Stillman’s send-up of rich Manhattanites, Metropolitan, and a little bit of The Sun Also Rises, where all the people “behave badly” toward each other. But I still love Frances, in part thanks to Rooney’s wonderful writing about this young woman learning how to develop actual friendships, learning how to have sex as a part of a relationship, things she knows almost nothing about, as witty and sleek and pretty as she is. It’s really, like Normal People, a coming-of-age story featuring two precocious girls living rent-free in space their parents provide for them, and talking smack about rich people while destroying a marriage in the process.

Along the way Frances develops endrometriosis and observes:

“I realised my life would be full of mundane physical suffering, and that there was nothing special about it. Suffering wouldn’t make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn’t make me special. Talking about it, or even writing about it, would not transform the suffering into something useful. Nothing would.”

Will Frances learn from her mistakes and find rue love and friendship and become actually nice and usefully self-reflective? Well, let me tell you, I just loved the final scene, with Frances outside talking to Nick on the phone, freezing, leading up to the last really surprising and confusing line that implicated me, at least, in the story, and revealed (to me) my being emotionally invested in the story, after all.

I had heard (which made me not want to read it, a couple years ago) that Rooney had described her first novel, the first draft written of which was written when she was 15, as “absolute trash” but I have to say she’s wrong, she doesn't know what she's talking about, it is really, really good!! (Or maybe she's talking about the sex scenes, which are for what its worth, really good even if you can't approve of it on some level?). Two books by Sally Rooney in one year, and I am completely a fan, and this review hasn’t really convinced you!! Maybe I’ll try harder later to get at why I love her wry, understated, compassionate style so much. ...more

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Aug 01, 2018 Bianca rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, debut-novel, female-author, irish-author, 2018, contemporary, irish

Meah, blah, I'm giving up, I've already spent too much time in the company of these characters.

I don't mind unlikable characters, I don't have an issue with sexual fluidity or cheating (as in I don't need a trigger warning, it doesn't prevent me from reading a novel). In saying all that, the characters were insufferable, vacuous, bland, and the writing didn't agree with me at all. In my year of reading mostly chick -lit, I created a GR shelf Im-So-Over-First-Person-Narratives. This novel belong ...more

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Apr 15, 2020 Vicky "phenkos" rated it it was amazing

Although I couldn't relate to any of the characters in Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends, I had a visceral reaction to the book. There were pages where my emotions were overwhelming and I could feel my eyes watering even though there was nothing there that resembled my own life in the slightest. I find affairs with married men an uninteresting subject; high-flying literary couples with holiday homes in the South of France a complete bore; cool young women who find it hard to communicate ...more

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Dec 08, 2019 Henk rated it really liked it · review of another edition

An uncomfortable read that sucks you into the sometimes bleak world of the narrator and shows what it's like to grow up in the modern day world
... and I felt sorry for all of us, like we were just little children pretending to be adults.

Our narrator
Bobbi told me she thought I didn’t have a ‘real personality’, but she said she meant it as a compliment. Mostly I agreed with her assessment. At any time I felt I could do or say anything at all, and only afterwards think: oh, so that’s the kind of pe ...more

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Jun 02, 2017 Latanya (Crafty Scribbles) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: realistic-fiction, international, contemporary

"A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple." - Goodreads

Let's be honest...

Selfish and self-absorbed young woman discusses her daily escapades with equally selfish and self-absorbed people of various occupation and age and learns absolutely nothing.

Sally Rooney's dialogue's realistic, albeit a bit strange considering Frances, the main character, remains an android throughout the entire piece. She's empty and cold "A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple." - Goodreads

Let's be honest...

Selfish and self-absorbed young woman discusses her daily escapades with equally selfish and self-absorbed people of various occupation and age and learns absolutely nothing.

Sally Rooney's dialogue's realistic, albeit a bit strange considering Frances, the main character, remains an android throughout the entire piece. She's empty and cold. By the time she demonstrates a sliver of emotional intelligence, we're the dumb ones for sticking around longer than deserved.

I love unlikable characters. I thrive on their stories. Usually, they possess a je nais se quoi begging us to join them on their journey. However, all I thought about was Frances' end to her journey. I did not care, which is sad. There is a health issue involved and I found myself shrugging, never sure if I'm manipulated into forced sympathy.

Good writing, which, at times, comes off as printed cinema verite. I can see a one-shot camera following Frances and her batch of smug and wealthy vagabonds, unimportant to the common person, waxing poetic about sex, adultery, wine, and travel over scenic pastures in black and white cinematic fashion. I give this story a plus on painting a strong picture as I read scenes.

Another plus? It's set in Ireland. I like reading international stories with their cultural nuances, slang, and other sights on what makes us normal (or abnormal) as we live life.

LGBT representation serves as its final plus. Frances's bisexual. Her friend and sometime hook-up, Bobbi's a lesbian, along with Melissa, another character entrenched in a strange menage a trois-like situation with Frances. I had no idea. But, I'm grateful for the representation, even if the women involved caused my eyes to sweat, due to excessive eye-rolling.

Yet, I desired more than literal conversations with Irish and LGBT friends. I yearned for a plot with a path (low path indeed) with characters earning my following. The good writing and LGBT representation saved my review from hailing a one-star verdict. I cannot recommend this story. It's boring.

Verdict: 2 out of 5

*Thanks to Penguin First Reads for the ARC in exchange for an honest review*

(Courtesy of http://www.craftyscribbles.com) ...more

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Dec 19, 2017 Michael Livingston rated it it was amazing

Wonderful - funny, smart and sad - not much happens in this book, but it's a joy to spend time with these difficult, intelligent and sometimes unpleasant people. ...more

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Jun 30, 2017 Carol (Bookaria) rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, 2017, netgalley

This book revolves around two college students in Dublin named Frances and Bobbi and their relationship with Melissa & Nick who are a married couple they meet early in the story.

It is told from the point of view of Frances which at times can be described as very matter-of-factly and at other times as very introspective. A lot of the interactions happened by email which I thought was a bit strange since nowadays most people communicate by text. I mean, there were some texts but a large part of t ...more

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About Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney

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Sally Rooney was born in 1991 and lives in Dublin, where she graduated from Trinity College. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Dublin Review, The White Review, The Stinging Fly, and the Winter Pages anthology.

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