Conversations with Friends — book review
“Now I was afraid that Nick was right: I isolated myself from criticism so I could behave badly without losing my sense of righteousness.”
Previously on Fatima reviews: “..i went on and read Conversations With Friends and i came to the conclusion that Sally Rooney is not really my cup of tea. I don’t know if i’m going to write a review about it.”
So *clears throat* I lied. Welcome to my review of Conversations With Friends.
Published in 2017, Conversations with Friends is Sally Rooney’s debut novel. The novel follows the lives of Frances and Bobbi, a twenty one friends and ex-lovers university students, who one day while performing poetry catches the eye of photographer Melissa, who pulls them into her life with her actor husband Nick. Frances and Nick then begin an affair that leads to difficult and uncomfortable situations with her friends and Melissa.
The story is told from Frances’ perspective and throughout the course of the novel we get to know:
- Frances perspective of herself; she has low self esteem, is rather selfish, and is cruel to people she is close to.
- Her relationship with her father; who sends her allowance, and which she has a poor relationship with.
- Frances and Bobbi’s messy relationship/ friendship.
- And lastly the affair with Nick, and Frances’ weird hate-admiration relationship with Melissa.
Throughout the novel, we watch Frances struggle with her expressing her feelings and vulnerability, as her relationships deteriorate.
Reading the synopsis, I was intrigued on how Rooney will tell this story. And while the author skillfully dissects the nature of relationships, while giving us readers a glimpse into the workings of the human heart and mind, I unfortunately didn’t enjoy this book for multiple reasons, so let’s get to it.
After reading Normal people you would think I would get used to the dialogue style but that didn’t happen. Most of the time I couldn’t tell if the character is talking to someone or if it’s their inner dialogue.
I do believe Sally Rooney has an amazing writing talent, she is very good at creating characters whose thoughts and feelings seem real, she does a great job of creating complex yet believable characters. But ultimately, I struggled with connecting to her characters. Her style seems rather distant and matter of fact which makes it hard to connect or care about her character.
I started this book after finishing Normal people and finished it feeling like I’d just read the same book again. Frances felt so much like Marianne, I would love for Rooney to write a different kind of female lead, a woman who doesn’t have to be so emotionally repressed to be interesting.
Another issue is, for a book that’s pretty character driven, there is no character growth or development at all.
Everything about Frances is flat, there is no character growth except for a few pages where she apologizes and finally ends her affair with Nick. She is so awful most of the time and cruel to the people she loves, her relationship with Nick seems to highlight that.
Meanwhile Nick -Melissa’s trophy husband- seems unhappy with his life while simultaneously making no effort to change it, he literally has the personality of a wall.
“Maybe he just likes to act passive so he doesn’t have to take the blame for anything.”
I know that not all characters need to be likable but something about these two makes it hard to empathize with them, they make poor decisions, there is no chemistry between them, and their intimacy scenes does not feel charged or challenged; they seem stoic and detached ( by the way, i still can’t comprehend why Nick was having sex with Frances while she was crying and not from pleasure mind you).
Bobbi is a decent side character that has a more complex and dynamic personality. Frances seems to always objectify Bobbi because she is beautiful, and imagining her face as hers??
While Melissa has only one dimension to her, the dominating, controlling wife (possibly because it’s told from France’s perspective).
“For a few seconds I imagined that this was my house, that I had grown up here, and the things in it belonged to me.”
I liked Philips’ character the most out of everyone, because he seemed the only person with common sense.
For a novel that’s set in Dublin, Ireland there is nothing about Irish culture that it could have been set anywhere, which made me feel a bit lost in sense of place. The author also did the same thing with mentioning topics as she did in Normal people. Rooney mentions topics such as class, capitalism, Iraq invasion, Zizek, but there was no actual standpoint on them and it ultimately made the read rather tedious.
And for a book titled Conversations with Friends, there were very limited conversations that bordered on forced and uncomfortable. Also who even writes so many emails in real life? And to their friends nonetheless? Have these people ever heard of whatsapp?
There is no plot. Again. The novel quietly drags on for three hundred pages and ends in a sort of ambivalent ending that I didn’t hope for but still makes sense considering the traits portrayed with these characters.
All in all, while I acknowledge Rooney’s talent and the fact that so many people enjoy her books, this book just wasn’t for me and I wouldn’t recommend it to any of my friends.
