This book jumped off the shelf into my arms as I was browsing at the bookstore!
Sally Rooney really gets how people, especially women, think and relate to each other. Conversations With Friends (2017, 307 pages) details the complicated relationship between Frances and Bobbi, two college students in Dublin. The two young women embark on a friendship with an older woman and her husband (Melissa and Nick).
I get a little squeamish in books or movies when someone is going to get caught doing something they shouldn’t be doing. I almost put the book down because I thought that’s where this book was headed… However after a day’s lapse I resumed reading and was so glad I did.
Frances perceptively narrates the progression of the different relationships. Per the title there is a lot of conversation, and also a lot of inner thinking. As the story proceeds, Frances does become the young millennial feminist that her personae presents. She is not afraid to be who she is and love whom she loves. (Grammar people is “whom” correct there?)
It was fun getting inside Frances’ mind. She is a stand-offish cool-as-a-cucumber sort on the outside and (of course) inwardly full of self-doubt. She is continually surprised at others’ reactions to her because she is so internally focused and doesn’t express herself to others. It made me reflect on paradigms we establish about ourselves and our relationships. It also made me wonder what type of woman I would be if I were 21 years old myself today! What choices would I make?
So I do recommend this book. I grabbed this copy at Words, let me know if you’d like to borrow it. Also – in 2017 it was on several Best Books of the Year lists (Vogue, Slate for example) and Sally Rooney won the Sunday Times Young Writers of the Year Award.
