Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

4/5 stars

It amazes me how Sally Rooney possesses the ability to create such dynamic and three-dimensional characters.

It also amazes me how when we age and changes with age, our perspectives also change. As we grow older, our, as a society, need for stability and healthy relationships grow much more than our need for it in our earlier years.

I say this as an introduction to Conversations with Friends. 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. His career seems to be stalled despite an abundance of talent. So, inevitably, Frances and Nick hook up, wrecking more damage on their world and the worlds of everyone around them.

Something I thought was interesting about this book was Frances and her complexity as a character. She says things like, “we can sleep together, but you should know I’m only doing it ironically” or “I just don’t have feelings concerning whether you f**k your wife or not.” But this is, of course, because of the self-hard Frances imposes on herself because she believes that she is damaged and doesn’t deserve good things in life, which in my opinion, is why she puts herself in this position with Nick in the first place. After all, she knows it’s wrong and is only going to hurt her in the end.

Sally Rooney, as always, writes with such precision and attention to detail is outstanding. Each word is carefully chosen, and each setting is clear and complex. For example, she once describes Melissa’s home as “full of music and people wearing long necklaces.” Conversations With Friends is filled with niche descriptions like these.

Her characterization is also something that amazes me because while she creates these complex and morally ambiguous characters, these characters are also people that we can relate to and see a bit of ourselves in.

Bottom line: Sally Rooney is brilliant. I will read anything she puts out.