Sally Rooney

Conversations with Friends

Conversations With Friends

Sarah Campbell

I looked out the window at the station. I had the sense that something in my life had ended, my image of myself as a whole or normal person maybe. I realized 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. I thanked my mother for the lift to the station and got out of the car.

WINNER OF THE SUNDAY TIMES / PFD YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2018 LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2018 A SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER AND TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 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.

Essence

I realized 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.

nica

You know, I still have that impulse to be available to you.

The idea of forgetting anything about you is kind of horrifying to me.

But at some level I still see you as the person who broke my heart and left me unfit for normal relationships.

Not that God existed in any material way but as a shared cultural practice so widespread that it came to seem materially real, like language or gender.

The truth is that I love you and I always have. Do I mean that Platonically? I don’t object when you kiss me. The idea of us sleeping together again has always been exciting. When you broke up with me I felt you beat me at a game we were playing together, and I wanted to come back and beat you.

I thought about all the things I had never told Nick about myself, and I started to feel better then, as if my privacy extended all around me like a barrier protecting my body. I was a very autonomous and independent person with an inner life that nobody else had ever touched or perceived.

I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.

This was the role that seemed to appeal to him more than anything, listening to things and asking intelligent questions that showed he had been listening. It made him feel needed.

I thought of the story I had sent to Valerie that morning, a story which I now remembered was explicitly about Bobbi, a story which characterised Bobbi as a mystery so total I couldn’t endure her, a force I couldn’t subjugate with my will, and the love of my life.

You could die, I thought, and it was a nice relaxing thought at the time. I imagined death like a switch, switching off all the pain and noise, cancelling everything.

I knew that he didn’t want to see me any more. He was a patient person and I had exhausted the patience. I hated the terrible things I had said to him, I hated what they revealed about me. I wanted him to be cruel now, because I deserved it. I wanted him to say the most vicious things he could think of, or shake me until I couldn’t breathe.

I laughed to myself although there was no one there to see me. I loved when he was available to me like this, when our relationship was like a Word document which we were writing and editing together, or a long private joke which nobody else could understand. I liked to feel that he was my collaborator. I liked to think of him waking up at night and thinking of me.

It was important to me that Bobbi would never be able to deny that at one point she had liked me very much.

She couldn’t understand that I didn’t love him. You must love him, she told me when I was sixteen. He’s your father.

Eventually, at three or four in the afternoon, I got out of bed. I didn’t feel like writing anything. In fact I felt that if I tried to write, what I produced would be ugly and pretentious. I wasn’t the kind of person I pretended to be. I thought of myself trying to be witty in front of Nick’s friends in the utility room and felt sick.

Watching the soap bubbles slide silently down the blades of the kitchen knives, I had a sudden desire to harm myself. Instead I put away the salt and pepper shakers and went into the living room.

I started to realise how much time I spent appeasing him, being falsely cheerful, and picking up things he’d knocked over. My jaw started to feel stiff, and I noticed myself flinching at small noises. Our conversations became strained, and more than once he accused me of changing my accent.

When he came home from work in the evening I used to freeze entirely still, and after a few seconds I would know with complete certainty if he was in one of the moods or not. Something about the way he closed the door or handled his keys would let me know, as clearly as if he yelled the house down.

I learned not to display fear, it only provoked him. I was cold like a fish.

I was aware of the fact that he could pretend to be anyone he wanted to be, and I wondered if he also lacked a ‘real personality’ the same way I did.

My ego had always been an issue. I knew that intellectual attainment was morally neutral at best, but when bad things happened to me I made myself feel better by thinking about how smart I was.

I would open fifteen tabs on my web browser while producing phrases like ‘epistemic rearticulation’ and ‘operant discursive practices’. I mostly forgot to eat on days like this and emerged in the evening with a fine, shrill headache. Physical sensations reintroduced themselves to me with a feeling of genuine novelty: breeze felt new, and the sound of birds outside the Long Room. Food tasted impossibly good, as did soft drinks. Afterwards I’d print the essay out without even looking over it. When I went to get my feedback, the notes in the margins always said things like ‘well argued’ and sometimes ‘brilliant’.

100% Sally Rooney’s worst work. definitely grew into her writing with time because this first person one pov wasn’t working for me. It made her unlikable characters even more annoying. Like now I’m pissed off esp with the most non-commital ending ever. Every body is annoying. All of them are like trying to be the smartest in the room. None of them like each other. lowk needed frances to be a bit more miserable for a while. Eat that cake and call every contact in your phone actually.The moral of the story: dont date inside your friend group. idk. it was okay. I see the groundwork for her other novels in it. But this needed more resolution. Like we need another 50 pages atleast to solve how many loose ends are still there. Like i get open endings but like you need some resolution with an open ending or not i feel like i wasted my time.

melanie

The entire second half I just wanted Frances to sit down and call her doctor 

Emily Lucie

absolutely disliked the book. it suffers from absolutely dreadful and predictable plot to painful prolonged commentaries disguised as parts of the story. even though i might agree with the author on a lot of issues since i am in a similar political demographic. i do not want to read a book that has multiple page dialogues that address a political issue the characters or the author do not really have any business talking about

Vincent Osvald

Good read kept me on my toes talking to a guy named Nick right now so it made me think about him more don’t really understand the name of the book but I did enjoy the conversation topics between the friends

Angeleeka

typical sally rooney, the characters felt painfully real. i related to frances very much. 

this is a story about learning to let oneself be known and the struggle to believe in one’s worthiness of love. it’s a quiet yet powerful narrative that lingers long after the last page.

saaral

typical sally rooney, the characters felt painfully real. i related to frances very much. 

this is a story about learning to let oneself be known and the struggle to believe in one’s worthiness of love. it’s a quiet yet powerful narrative that lingers long after the last page.

Kaarthik sekar 

My least favorite of the Sally Rooney books I’ve read, but still quite good. Some things that France and Bobbi do, I see reflected in myself and the women in my life, but that said, it makes the novel very low stakes. Just young adults doing things with no true consequences.

Brynn Sklar

Frances is a lot stronger than me because Nick would have sent me into the psych ward 

3.75

Frances is a lot stronger than me because Nick would have sent me into the psych ward 

Rec from Ella. Sally Rooney does an excellent job of writing characters I Despise yet deeply resonate with. I don’t want to passively let the world go by and only react in anger. But also fuck Nick oh my god if the devil can’t reach you he sends a man like that. 

this was my first Roony book, and in the process of reading i think i might have gotten a minor crush on her. not in a romantic way, but in a profound admiration kind of way. her writing has a quality to it, that i can best define as emphathy. the kind of emphathy that makes you pick up and feel every little touch of emotion in the room. this made the story feel alive and raw, which i loved. i also really liked that she used this story to highlight the issue of the lack of research funding for women’s health, by powerfully showcasing the consequences it has in the daily life of a woman suffering from endometriosis. with this said - then why not 5 stars? while i spent the first third of the book thinking “god this is brilliant”, something about Francis’ relationship with Nick felt predictable and in the end unresolved. but the writing has got me hooked, and I am already considering which of her books i should read next.

Cecilie Spangsberg

the way sally rooney portrays the complexity of human’s feelings will always be exceptional

moonstone

Katharine kollman

Disappointing. Good writing, but the story and the main character is stupid

Iben engeseth

felicity hu

An engaging portrait of richly imagined characters that highlights people’s flaws, insecurities and the messiness of relationships.

Laura Dobie

Karmen 

utsa

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence, beginning a complex ménage-à-quatre. But when Frances and Nick get unexpectedly closer, the sharply witty and emotion-averse Frances is forced to honestly confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time.

Maureen

"You underestimate your own power so you don't have to blame yourself for treating other people badly."


***

3.5 stars. Once again, I am in awe of how Rooney writes. Everything just *flows* seamlessly. Frances is deeply flawed—but so is everyone else. Rooney did a great job with this book because the character's voice felt so authentic! It was a pleasure to read throughout. 

I was ready to give this 4 stars but I just can't accept the ending. It's messed up—but hey, that's real life for you

“[A] cult-hit . . . [a] sharply realistic comedy of adultery and friendship.”—Entertainment Weekly WINNER OF THE SUNDAY TIMES (UK) YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE AND SLATE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BUZZFEED AND ELLE Frances is a coolheaded and darkly observant young woman, vaguely pursuing a career in writing while studying in Dublin. Her best friend is the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi. At a local poetry performance one night, they meet a well-known photographer, and as the girls are then gradually drawn into her world, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman’s sophisticated home and handsome husband, Nick. But however amusing Frances and Nick’s flirtation seems at first, it begins to give way to a strange—and then painful—intimacy. Written with gemlike precision and marked by a sly sense of humor, Conversations with Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth, and the messy edges of female friendship SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD “Sharp, funny, thought-provoking . . . a really great portrait of two young women as they’re figuring out how to be adults.”—Celeste Ng, “Late Night with Seth Meyers Podcast” “The dialogue is superb, as are the insights about communicating in the age of electronic devices. Rooney has a magical ability to write scenes of such verisimilitude that even when little happens they’re suspenseful.”—Curtis Sittenfeld, The Week “Rooney has the gift of imbuing everyday life with a sense of high stakes . . . a novel of delicious frictions.”—New York “A writer of rare confidence, with a lucid, exacting style . . . One wonderful aspect of Rooney’s consistently wonderful novel is the fierce clarity with which she examines the self-delusion that so often festers alongside presumed self-knowledge. . . . But Rooney’s natural power is as a psychological portraitist. She is acute and sophisticated about the workings of innocence; the protagonist of this novel about growing up has no idea just how much of it she has left to do.”—Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker “This book. This book. I read it in one day. I hear I’m not alone.”—Sarah Jessica Parker (Instagram)

A Novel

Katerina

I truly refuse to believe that this was Rooney’s debut novel. How could someone have such complex insight on human beings at such a young age? 

I enjoyed “Conversations with Friends” so much, perhaps just as much as I’ve enjoyed all of her other work (or maybe a bit more than the rest?). 

It was incredibly interesting to explore the theme of conversations and how Frances, the protagonist, was coping with her life both with the meaningful conversations in her life and without.

You could literally feel her suffering when she was all alone, unable to share her most deepest fears even though she didn’t want to admit it. Perhaps the only time I felt sadness in this book was when the pages were left without any conversation. They felt void, and empty, and sad. How much meaning can a conversation really hold? (“What is a friend? What is a conversation?”)

And I am always amazed by Rooney, but perhaps here more than before, by the way she hides the thing that holds the most meaning in her books in between the paragraphs. No quotes, no nothing. The conversations are always hidden in plain sight. 

… I also feel like I gotta mention the main character because of the impact she had on me. I loved the inner path that Frances had to walk, her growth in so many ways but also her inability to grow. I dived so deep into her world view. Perhaps Frances, out of all of Rooney’s characters, had the most intriguing thoughts to me. I was mesmerized by her way of thinking, not always agreeing but always trying to understand her. Her flaws, as fucked up as they are, were so interesting to analyze. She is so different from me to the core and yet somehow the few similarities that I found between us both troubled me to no end and gave me some sort of an epiphany. 

The quote that I will remember long after I’ve closed this books is this one: 

“I worried that if I did turn out to have a personality, it would be one of the unkind ones. Did I only worry about this question because as a woman I felt required to put the needs of others before my own? Was ‘kindness’ just another term for submission in the face of conflict?”

So much to think about. I love that Rooney always leaves me like this. 

(This was supposed to be one sentence but… when have I ever? I guess I had a lot to say about it.)

Mira <3

idk maybe i'll like it more when it's a tv show. kinda wanna rad normal people kind don't wanna

I have an issue with Sally Rooney’s writing because to me she romanticizes unhealthy and manipulative relationships, romantic and platonic. It does make me think though, about the self-worth we all perceive ourselves to have and how we allow others to alter or control that perception. I do appreciate that I learned several new words from this, acrimonious, bourgeoisie, etc.

Liz Hunsaker

the story was good but the way of storytelling is not for me

Lotte Herremans

Abbie Duggan

I find myself to be drawn to characters who struggle to articulate their emotions, recognize this inability and swim within it, as if marking themselves with self-deprecation is a source of pride...

Is this simply what comes through in Sally Rooney’s writing style? Is this the type of people she finds herself drawn to? Is this how she views herself? I couldn’t help myself from wondering these things as I drew comparisons between the characters in Conversations with Friends and those in Normal People.

She is so perfectly capable of holding conflicting views of every character in a story — outlining the way they see themselves and the way they are seen by others. Or maybe what I love is the way her characters view themselves in relation to those around them.

Or is it the way she writes about intimacy? It often feels like her characters learn more about themselves through their intimate interactions, and then use that same intimacy as something that can be ripped away in an effort to cause hurt to the other party? Her characters can be so cruel...

Whatever the case, Sally Rooney’s writing is exquisite. 

Being in 21-year old Frances’s world and seeing others through her eyes felt like a treat. As for her own opinions of herself... well, I’d love to Frances age, explore more of herself, and use her clear intelligence to craft a different narrative for her life. I’d like to believe that one day Frances will look back with amusement and think herself to be vapid and ironic. This to me perfectly describes how it feels to be 21.

I’ll probably be hooked on Sally Rooney for eternity.

Conversations with Friends

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