being mean to yourself alone at night
to figure out if your cheeks are appropriately flushed, and eyes perfectly glistening
Fiction, 2017
Conversations With Friends put me in a reading slump a few months ago. Not in the sense that I was trudging through it; rather, I devoured it, and everything I read after fell short in comparison. Something wickedly funny and painfully relatable about Rooney makes sentences zoom through my brain with an intensity that leaves me feeling dizzy after. I changed genres, periods, and authors, but nothing arrested my attention. It is thus why I begrudgingly recommend this to you. Yes, it’s fantastic, but it’s also from the typical canon of the Rooneysphere. There are affairs galore, a woman brutally unravels, and love is not reciprocated. You may ask, as I frequently do, why would I need to read about pathetic situations when my life is already full of them? Well, honestly, I don’t know if it helps, and I don’t know if you should! But there is something magical about being called out for your bad behaviour with the piercing eloquence that Rooney achieves. And whoever you relate to in the novel, you can be assured of a reality check.
Frances and Bobbi are best friends, spoken word poets, and college students who simultaneously pretend to be older than they are (read: wine, evening soirees, conversations that tilt Hegelian) while being embarrassingly immature (read: passive-aggressiveness, jumping into “toxic” situationships, forgetting to eat). One day, they meet Melissa and Nick, a beautiful married couple that presents a kind of challenge to Frances & Bobbi. Melissa is a “photographer-journalist” (but some of the descriptions of her work made me cackle), and Nick is an actor. They are rich, gorgeous, and, most enticingly, available. Bobbi and Melissa enter a strange friendship, while Frances and Nick—surprise!—have a tumultuous affair. Since this is Rooney, nothing really happens, but with a few words exchanged, everything changes.
If you’re looking to read about the loneliness of sex, being humiliated by someone, struggling to articulate love, and feeling like a failure, this is obviously the book for you. But whereas others in the Rooneysphere lean into this canon almost sadistically, with a tint of glorification, Conversations With Friends doesn’t want to fool you. This novel knows that it is full of flawed people behaving poorly and creating a mess. So, we are reminded, “You underestimate your own power so you don’t have to blame yourself for treating other people badly. You tell yourself stories about it.” Heartbreak isn’t a pass to behave however you want, nor is it a well of protection. It’s simply a narrative.
Song - the 1
Film - (500) Days of Summer
Lovely. What a pleasure to read. And thanks for the song, loved it.
Great review! You've perfectly captured why this is my favorite Sally Rooney novel (thus far).