Conversations with Friends: A Novel

I really don't understand the excitement and buzz surrounding this book. Allowing for the cultural differences of my American heritage vs the Irish setting of the novel, the protagonists still seem like entitled, self-important, lazy kids with low morals. Their high opinions of themselves and judgemental attitudes about everyone elses homes, intellect and opinion made my interest in them tenuous at best. I tried to care that the main characters affair with a married man made her already low self esteem plunge, but frankly I just didn't care. Typical millennial novel- well written but of no real substance

I've been wanting to read more literary fiction by my peers, and my curiosity was piqued when I heard an interview with Sally Rooney while driving around in my home state of Massachusetts, and then I met her classmate later in Dublin, who gave me "Mr. Salary", which was sharp and excellent. (Almost as perfect as short stories can get. WOW.) So I felt driven to buy her novel.I don't always have staying power with books, but I read this one from cover to cover in a few days. I didn't agree with Frances' choice in the end, and I loved the fact that I felt invested enough to care. I wanted to go with her through to "The End". The dialogue was wonderful, and I ate up the book -- not just because of the chemistry generated between the characters, but because on a mechanical level I wanted to study "how the author did what she did" -- so many scenes were pitched just right, compelling, and exquisite. The storyline stays wonderfully tight and on-point, and follows a logical sequence, with each emotional development building on the last. At about 2/3rds of the way through, the protagonist reaches an acute level of misery, and I admittedly found it a bit harder to read. It was hard on an emotional level (which is great -- no reason the author shouldn't put us through that, if it's the truth!), but my own tiniest criticism is that I think the storytelling could have dialed back on the statements of misery. The first 2/3rds is so beautifully stark that the way Frances' breakdown is told feels like a shift in diction. (But then again, weren't we all agonized and angsty in our early 20's? In that sense, Sally hit the right note, one that most of us shy/squirm away from!!)Brilliant book, and I felt viscerally and sensually within the narrative the entire time (deeply cringing when I read Melissa's long email, as if it was directed at me... or watching Frances wearing the sports coat, looking like a "candle"... etc. etc.) I will read it / flip through it again just to study it more. Loved how it was both physical and highly cerebral, and adored the intimate and frank look at women's sexuality and health as well. Incredible accomplishment, and I am excited to see what she writes next!!

The friends may have conversations, but most often they don’t talk. Rather it is misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and apologies for three hundred pages with episodes of honesty, brief pleasures, many passages that reach the poetic, and some insights. Living with Frances, I feel, would be like being a trucker contracted to haul unstable nitroglycerin over mountains on rough roads. It’s an experience to be survived with compensating moments. At the end when I closed the book, I could only see a journey of washouts and potholes for Frances and her friends stretching toward the horizon. I wasn’t unhappy to get out of the truck, but not regretful that I took the trip.

I heard great things about this author, and after reading the reviews on this book I purchased it & was looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. There wasn't one character that was likable, and there wasn't really any overall character development in general. I found myself getting irritated with the protagonist, rather than sympathizing with her. I have read lots of different types of novels and I almost always am able to connect with the protagonist on some level, and I was disappointed that I wasn't able to with this novel. The story was also a little dry- it took me longer than normal to read this.

My low rating has to do with the reviews which inaccurately compared this to James Joyce. If I'd known it was more like Bridget Jones' Diary, and gone to it with that expectation, I would've been fine with it. So it's perhaps not fair to judge it by a reviewer's inaccuracy.

Not for me. Self indulgent, boring characters with little plot development. More YA market perhaps?

Within the first few pages, it was clear that this novel would be unlike most others I read: a lack of quotation marks (blending dialogue with inner thoughts of the narrator), restrained, intentionally-limited prose that aimed to mimic the mindset of the first-person narrator, and a casual simplicity of plot. There are not flashbacks or interweaving of separate character consciousnesses, and the texting/e-mailing place this book firmly in the space of today's world.This novel asks you to inhabit the mind of a 20-something young woman as she goes through a series of friendships that threaten to become relationships and relationships that descend back to friendship. And everything in between. Occasionally it dips its toe in deeper, far-reaching systems, but--like so many of us do in real life--these are tangential rather than foundational, at least in how we prioritize them.Reading this book, I tended to want it to be something more than it was, but at the same time its self-limiting was refreshing and, more importantly, the entirety of its point. In a world where we tend to see ourselves in the most grandiose of ways, this book reminds us just what reality looks and sounds like. At least from this narrator's perspective.And for that alone, it's worth the time to read.

This book comes festooned with awards and laudatory reviews, blurbs and hype and Rooney herself is acclaimed as the Next Big Thing, one of the great authors of the 21st Century.The mind boggles, the currency cheapens, and all faith in pundits and the judgement of Zadie Smith goes right down the pan.This is a truly, truly, dreadful book, almost fascinatingly so. Frances, supposedly "cool headed and observant", falls in love with an older, married man. It goes badly. Surprised? She apparently is. "I can't remember if I thought about this at the beginning. How it was doomed to end unhappily" is a line from about halfway through. Apart from the cringe-worthy triteness, it also reveals the lead character to be stunningly obtuse, and far from the "observant" person the blurb on the cover would have us believe. All the characters - Frances, her best friend/lover Bobbi, the journalist Melissa and the husband/lover Nick - are so flatly written they might as well be cardboard cut-outs, their dialogue equally flat and lifeless and dull, to the point that it became impossible to work out who's talking. It could be anybody, about anybody, about anything.And then there's the prose itself -- it's....it's hideous, it really is. About halfway through I started making notes in the margins, underlining the worst passages -- something an editor is supposed to do. In no particular order: "His heart continued to beat like an excited or miserable clock" It...it what?? "Valerie spoke with a moneyed British accent, too rich to be comical". How does THAT work? "I perceived that my face and hair were becoming wet, too wet to feel normal"; "She looked clean and dry like a model from a catalogue. My hair was leaking water into my face". Leaking? "I laughed to myself, although there was no one there to see me". That's kind of what it means, right? "He never touched me like that usually. But he was looking at me, so I guess he must have known who I was". Wait, this woman's supposed to be "observant", right? And my favourite: "He touched me cautiously like a deer touches things with its face". Oh god, make it stop.Seriously, this is supposed to be award-worthy? A tired story, hitched to some staggeringly dreadful prose which reveals nothing of the workings of the human heart, nothing of the soul, nothing of passion. Shame on the critics who have passed this off as something worthy, shame on every one of the publications whose glowing quotes litter the front pages of this travesty. I'm tempted to read Rooney's "Normal People" to see if it's as hysterically bad or if, by some miracle, she improved. If I come across a copy for less than a pound, I might just, but I'm not paying much more for this kind of nonsense.

This book is in the running for the worst book I have read so far this year. I kept on reading in the hope that something would happen or that one of the characters would endear themselves to be but I shouldn't have bothered. This book is banal and the characters are irritating and impossible to bond with on any level. The writing is clumpy and oddly bland, there is no descriptions of Ireland or France that invoke any connections with those places. This is one of those books that I wonder how on earth she got a publishing deal when there are so many better authors self publishing amazing works because they can't get published and this drivel can. I just don't get it.

I don't even know where to start with this review. This book was so bad it actually makes me feel angry that I finished it and wasted my time. I kept wanting to give it another chance but the while thing just frustrated me.The characters in this book aren't just badly written, I hated them all and they learned nothing from their experiences, they just repeated their loathing behaviour and terrible life decisions over and over again. The main character is so full of self loathing and yet completely self centred and so over privileged but treats herself like the endless victim of every situation.I have no doubt that sally rooney can write, but these characters make me want to punch a wall.The story goes nowhere and seems like it begins when it ends. I also didn't enjoy the conversation style without quote marks, it just made it unnecessarily difficult to distinguish between what characters were saying and what they were thinking.Sorry I wasted my time reading it and I have no clue why it's so highly critically acclaimed.

In my student days, I knew more than one Frances, cooler than everyone else, more intelligent, and slightly (or often very) intimidating. Then, years later you find out they were actually more messed up than everyone else.Conversations with Friends is the story of four people and the shifting relationships between them. Frances and Bobbi are students in Dublin. Ex-lovers, they remain close friends and work the literary circuit as performance poets. Frances is introverted, a talented writer, while Bobbi is an extrovert, the more gifted performer. Melissa is a photographer who wants to profile the two young women. She invites them to a party at her home, where they meet her husband, Nick, completing the central quartet. Bobbi fancies Melissa, Frances is drawn to Nick.As the story progresses, it shifts between Dublin and a holiday in France. Through the novel, each goes through ups and downs and the relationships between them are equally volatile. We also learn about their troubled pasts and present, especially Nick and Frances.In a word, I thought it was terrific, absolutely terrific. I've read a number of more critical reviews and while I can appreciate a number (but not all) of the negative comments, I still think the book is terrific.Is this a book in which none of the characters is pleasant? I would have to disagree with that. Frances is outwardly cold, snarky and aloof. But she is also insecure, damaged and sensitive. She might be difficult , but she isn't unlovable. There is one devastating scene near the end of the book where she is confronted by the difference between her own self image and the impression another character has of her.It is true that this isn't a plot heavy book, but that isn't the point. This is primarily a book about relationships, and those relationships are superbly drawn. As the portrayal of friendship between two young women, that between Frances and Bobbi feels completely genuine and realistic. The sparks which fly between Nick and Frances generated by something between love and hate are thrilling.The writing style is flat, functional, almost child like at times. Again, as the voice of this disengaged, alienated young woman that came across as completely authentic.So, it a nutshell, this is a stunningly humane work about damaged, ambiguous, very human people.

There were moments in this book I just wanted it to take off. You spend a lot of time (most of the book) thinking come on get good, get good and the only reason you really stick with it is because of her abilities as a a writer. You can tell Sally Rooney's a fabulous writer, there is some gorgeous prose but it's so difficult to stick with because you just never ever warm to the characters and it just meanders aimlessly at times. I literally threw the book on the bed in frustration having finished the final paragraph. I do think she'll write a wonderful book one day but unfortunately it's not this one.