Book Review: Conversations With Friends By Sally Rooney
By Isabel Calvert, Contributing Writer
Not since Zadie Smith’s White Teeth came onto the scene in 2000 has a debut novel by a female author been heralded as the zeitgeist of a generation.
At first, I ignored the hype. I didn’t want to be sold a novel that “definitively” represented the modern relationship and gently poked fun at art students at university. However, this book deserves the attention and I quickly joined Rooney’s leagues of adoring female readers after reading Conversations With Friends.
The novel centers on Frances, and her fellow poet—and ex-lover—Bobbi. As childhood lovers, Frances still finds her identity irrevocably tied to Bobbi’s, who is more vivacious, outgoing and controversial. They’ve shared every aspect of their lives with each other, until now.
Frances and Bobby study literature and history, respectively, in Trinity College Dublin. During one of the pair’s spoken-word performances, they meet Melissa, an older photographer; Bobbi is instantly taken with Melissa, while Frances has her own reservations about the older women. Later that evening, however, Melissa introduces the girls to her husband Nick, a charmingly handsome and successful actor—little does Frances know how much this chance encounter will affect her life and challenge her beliefs.
Despite the age difference, the four soon develop a friendship with one another, although not in equal parts, and the life of our creative protagonist takes a sharp left into uncharted territory.
All of these characters use “conversations” as forms of verbal sparring—a way to assert dominance and propagate an air of “cool.” Frances and her fellow students at Trinity University work in the arts and maintain their positions as Marxists, all while surviving on inherited wealth from their parents. Frances declares that “no one who likes Yeats is capable of emotional intimacy.”
Torn between her illicit relationship with Nick and her loyalties to best friend Bobbi, Frances realizes that she can’t “have it all.”
Rooney’s descriptions of sex are unromanticized, emotionally distant and painfully realistic. Nick is an actor and Frances finds sex with him performative— enjoying saying things and provoking him to cum even more than the act itself.
For Frances, desire is like “a key turning hard inside my body, turning so forcefully that I could do nothing to stop it”.
As Frances and Nick’s relationship unfolds, they discuss sex and friendship, infidelity and intimacy, art and literature, politics and gender, and, of course, one another.
Frances is brutal in her criticisms, especially regarding herself. Rooney captures the pitch-perfect tone of a certain type of college student whose self-righteousness is undercut with self-loathing. As a student in the arts with a cynical view on romance, it cuts close to the bone in the most appealing way. This is essential reading for women transitioning into adulthood, having a sexual awakening or having been involved in a relationship with an age-gap. It’s at once satirical, thought-provoking, sexy—and will probably one day be called seminal.