Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Conversations with Friends

my second go with Sally Rooney (first being Normal People), and this time was much more enjoyable. nowhere near as bleak and depressing, but still very emotional. i found the narrator’s desperate need for validation relatable; me too girlie. really well plotted. don’t be fooled by the title though: it’s a lot of internal monologue and more about the conversations that didn’t happen than the ones that did.

i have to comment on the US cover, especially for the audiobook (storygraph shows a different one but you can see what i’m talking about here: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41DTekX2n4L._SL500_.jpg). first of all, i don’t mind the composition but i dislike the art style, its flatness and lifelessness when this book is all about complex characters. but what really bothers me is that i think some other artist was given the task of adapting the cover art to a square aspect ratio for the audiobook, and literally copied, pasted, and mirrored the original tightly-cropped faces, adding in the nose bits. because, why are they so symmetrical?? why are their facial features so small?? it’s firmly in the uncanny valley. shoutout to the Danish cover, though, so pretty: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/0bf9c4f3-3123-4d7b-a6b5-8955ff06e5f6
edit: the Russian hardcover is also beautiful: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/183d6a3b-d207-4cfb-aa9e-e36bc6df3f84

Content Warnings

bookish_5280's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I read Normal People just recently and felt that I absolutely had to get my hands on another Sally Rooney book immediately. I had this lurching feeling in my stomach starting this book, fearing that it wouldn't live up to her debut novel. All those thoughts disappeared within a couple pages. Rooney has this incredible, irresistible ability to encapsulate little moments--the little pleasures, the little disappointments, the little beautiful details--all the things that might seem mundane and unimportant she surrounds with this stunning, heartthrobbingly accurate language. You read it and you just have to close the book and sit back and think, "wow. that is something so normal, so everyday, that i've completely ignored it. and yet it's so incredibly beautiful." Frances and Bobbi and Nick and Melissa are all complicated--the book, at its core, isn't about cheating or marriage or romance. It's about acknowledging how all these intricate moving parts (traumas, previous relationships, financial hardships, psychologically engrained power dynamics) play into the formation of somebody's life path. Sally Rooney somehow manages to let the reader live inside multiple characters' minds simultaneously and use this omniscience to reflect on how these people's histories got them to the place where they are right now. At multiple points in the book, everything is so utterly confused and chaotic and dysfunctional and depressing and yet you see these characters' thoughts with complete clarity, and it's absolutely magical. Sally Rooney's books are this whole other world with genuine, real characters experiencing life at its harshest and most disorienting--it's a world with people we might know, with the toughest, rawest situations, and yet also the most compelling, hopeful moments.

"You live through certain things before you understand them."

Content Warnings

seforana's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

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bcooper21's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

readwith_le's review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Content Warnings

piastri's review

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

the writing was nice, but i just couldn’t get into the story and i couldn’t stand the characters and the plot felt a bit ridiculous.

it seemed like nothing really happened in the story, and the reflection on relationships and what it means to love and be loved just felt so pretentiously pessimistic.

maybe i’m missing the point of the book, but i don’t really see the hype.

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