Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Brittany, beginning a complex ménage à quatre. But when Frances and Nick get unexpectedly closer, the sharpy witty and emotion-averse Frances is forced to honestly confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time.

Conversations with Friends is Rooney’s debut novel and has become hugely successful. It’s very readable and the setting of a city university is familiar to many who might read her books.

It is obvious that Rooney drew on her own experiences for the settings and characters in this novel but that is not necessarily a flaw – it helps make the characters more realistic and enables her to add the depth that comes from having lived the characters’ experiences herself. A result of this is that the characters are self-aware and the language used to describe their thoughts and feelings is articulate and clear.

Another effect of the depth Rooney is able to add is that the characters are deliberately imperfect. This is somewhat of a ‘coming of age’ novel and the characters take risks, pushing the boundaries of what society considers acceptable, and grappling with the feelings associated with those situations.

Conversations with Friends is in some ways an ideal book – it addresses thought-provoking and sometimes serious issues without being too ‘serious’ a book.