Brilliant characters, themes and dialogue
- Book: Conversations with Friends
- Location: Dublin, Provence
- Author: Sally Rooney
Not much happens in Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney’s much vaunted debut novel.
Frances is a 21 year-old college student in Dublin, an aspiring writer and a spoken-word poetry performer with Bobbi, her more extrovert and attractive best friend and ex-lover. They enter the orbit of journalist and photographer Melissa and her flaky actor husband Nick, both older and outwardly more sophisticated than the girls.
A strange and dangerous intimacy develops between this unlikely foursome, in Ireland and in the heady heat of a house party in France.
But the raw power of the novel comes from Rooney’s brilliant characters, themes and dialogue, rather than from its physical actions.
Frances is torn between her principles, fierce independence and annoyingly ordinary lust for Nick:
‘We can sleep together if you want, but you should know I’m only doing it ironically.’
How does the friendship between Frances and Bobbi evolve in this maelstrom of disappearing youth, new relationships and, more importantly, a writer’s betrayal of her friend in a published short story?
‘I thought of the story I had sent to Valerie that morning, a story which I remembered now 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. I paled at this memory.‘
Frances also suffers from a disappointing father and a debilitating illness, but out of chaos and sadness can she still salvage something from the wreckage of her damaged, youthful life…
‘I’m fine. I just feel that I haven’t been the person that I should have been. I don’t know what I’m saying now. I wish I had gotten to know you better and treated you with more kindness. I want to apologise for that.’
Rooney’s writing is fiercely intelligent. Her second novel, Normal People, was published at the ripe old age of 27 and was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker prize. I can’t wait to see which characters she conjures up – and where she takes the reader – in her third.
Please wait...
