Will I love Conversations with Friends?

Sally Rooney sharply captures the emotional confusion of early adulthood.

Her characters are smart, self-aware, and still completely capable of making a mess of their lives, especially when it comes to love and friendship.

What I love most about the novel is the way it treats female friendship as the emotional center of the story. The relationship between Frances and Bobbi feels just as complicated, formative, and intimate as any romantic relationship.

Rooney writes with a kind of quiet honesty about the way we move through our twenties and thirties—trying to understand who we are, what we want, and why… show more.

I love this book because the characters are realistic and introspective, yet self-serving at every turn.

When Frances begins an affair with a married man, it’s easy to dismiss her actions as selfish. But I think she’s a multidimensional character—pensive and smart, quietly struggling with problems that don’t have to do with her romance at all.

I appreciate it when I can sympathize with and understand a character’s complex motivations, especially when they continue to make unappealing choices.

This, Sally Rooney’s first novel, was greeted with widespread critical acclaim. Fresh, witty, knowing, and au courant in its exploration of present-day sexual and romantic entanglements, the novel was clearly the work of a major talent. 

Both Conversations and Rooney’s highly popular second novel, Normal People, have been adapted for television. Perhaps you’ve seen one or both and have read the novels as a result. If not, I urge you to do so, beginning with Conversations. 

I haven’t yet watched either adaptation, but I believe that watching and reading have different sorts of advantages. Against the immediacy and… show more.

I devoured Sally Rooney’s debut in a single day when it came out in 2017.

I remember being blown away by her ability to effortlessly convey the depth and complexity of close relationships – particularly the dynamic between narrator Frances, a coolly ironic 21-year-old student, and her ex-girlfriend-now-best-friend-but-maybe-still-romantic-interest, Bobbi.

I loved Conversations with Friends not only for its three-dimensional characters and beautifully precise writing, but also for how true to life it felt. It was the first time I had read a novel that really captured the way my friends and I spoke, thought, and behaved – a thrilling experience. 

Of all the genres, I’m drawn most to contemporary realism and this book is a spectacular example. Despite the age gap between myself and the main character (Frances, aged 21) the writing is so astute, assured, and insightful that this book has no problem straddling the generations. Friendship definitions herein are not conventional which makes it infinitely interesting; the four main characters are a mix of best friends, exes, spouses, new friends, new flings, and new infatuations. Their daily concerns and communications are utterly contemporary, reflecting the seamless mish-mash of digital and in-person updates that sustain modern connections. Vulnerability is… show more.