Book Review: Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. I like Rooney’s writing and her characters, but I’m not quite aligned with the ethics of this story, which revolves around an extramarital affair. I’m not above reading books about unethical people or situations, but though the characters seem to be searching for an alternative to the social norm and the ethics that society prescribes, they still ended the book by *spoiler* acknowledging the pain they will nonetheless inflict by continuing the affair and going for it anyway, and it was portrayed in a romantic light.

That being said, I did really enjoy the realism in Sally Rooney’s characters, as I did in her novel Normal People. They were all incredibly flawed, as all real people are, and so they were all unlikable at least at some point in the novel. I particularly enjoyed the depth of both Nick and Frances, probably because they were the two introverts, but I thought Bobbi and Melissa were more unlikeable and couldn’t really care less about them. Both Frances and Nick had high walls and a pathological desire to hide their emotions, and watching them navigate a relationship, hiding behind sarcastic banter and saying things they don’t mean, was painfully relatable. They both suffered from depression and self-loathing. Mental health is a common theme in Rooney’s works (based on the two novels I’ve read so far), which I appreciate even if it manifests differently in the characters than it has in me. 

The writing occasionally reminded me of Hemingway a bit, particularly when Rooney described a social situation or a dialogue Frances wasn’t involved in short, distinct, distant, but observant sentences. Rooney’s writing is simple like Hemingway’s, but a bit more emotional and perhaps more intuitive.

Some snippets I particularly liked:

When in a social situation: “the dynamic that had eventually revealed itself didn’t interest me, or even involve me. I could have tried harder to engage myself, but I probably resented having to make an effort to be noticed.”

On disillusionment: “I wanted to explain that I didn’t know how much I was allowed to feel about it, or how much of what I felt at the time I was still allowed to feel in retrospect.”

On not wanting to talk about it but make it more complex (I can’t tell you how often I’ve felt this exact way): “I couldn’t begin to phrase the explanation of what the doctor had told me, because there were so many parts to it, and it would take so long, and involve so many individual words and sentences. The thought of saying so many words about it made me feel physically sick.”

On shared experiences and lack of individuality: “I realized my life would be full of mundane physical suffering, and that there was nothing special about it. Suffering wouldn’t make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn’t make me special. Talking about it, or even writing about it, would not transform the suffering into something useful.”

On conversation: “I didn’t feel with her, like I did with many other people, that while I was talking she was just preparing the next thing she wanted to say. She was a great listener, an active listener.”

I really liked how this person named Rachel put it on Goodreads, and I couldn’t figure out a better way to say it: “Once again I was impressed with Rooney’s writing; it’s simple and seemingly effortless, but the kind of natural and conversational cadence she achieves is no easy feat.”