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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book hurt my heart and my feelings and made me feel sick and strange and I liked it
Anything Sally Rooney writes makes me feel deeply. This story was superb. In the end, I couldn’t believe I was rooting for an extramarital affair to succeed. This is how Sally Rooney writes. Up close and personal. The nuance and complexities of human relationships are centerfold to this story. Not everything is what it seems.
Truthfully, I found the protagonist and the people she surrounded herself with (aka Bobbi, Melissa, and Nick) to be quite insufferable at times. But, I still found myself rooting for them all to be okay.
Truthfully, I found the protagonist and the people she surrounded herself with (aka Bobbi, Melissa, and Nick) to be quite insufferable at times. But, I still found myself rooting for them all to be okay.
reflective
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
he was the first person i had met since bobbi who made me enjoy conversation, in the same irrational and sensuous way i enjoyed coffee or loud music
As usual, Rooney's ability to distill the agony of trying to love someone when you're twenty-something, extremely smart, and completely clueless continues to amaze. Every misunderstanding or twisted pattern within this book felt like a past experience that I'd been on one side or the other of at some point.
The ending made me hit the book AND throw it across the room, so I'm unsure if that added or subtracted a star.
Also all the main characters desperately need therapy, but if they went I guess there wouldn't be a novel.
The ending made me hit the book AND throw it across the room, so I'm unsure if that added or subtracted a star.
Also all the main characters desperately need therapy, but if they went I guess there wouldn't be a novel.
slow-paced
i can see this not being everyone's cup of tea, given how painfully mundane it is, but I loved it. Brilliant and real.
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Having read this so soon after Rooney's Normal People, I feel like Conversations with Friends isn't a terribly distinct narrative.
Maybe it's the audiobook narrator, Aoife McMahon (who also narrated Normal People), but the way the story is told is monotone and so distant from the prose it's hard to enjoy it. There's also the matter of the protagonist, Francine. She feels a bit too much like Marianne, her relationship with Nick too similar too Connell. Normal People might actually be a refinement of the ideas and characters in Conversations with Friends.
Overall, as a story centered on the complications of maturing friendships, self-destructive behavior, it's a decent story. The audiobook narrator leaves a lot to be desired.
Maybe it's the audiobook narrator, Aoife McMahon (who also narrated Normal People), but the way the story is told is monotone and so distant from the prose it's hard to enjoy it. There's also the matter of the protagonist, Francine. She feels a bit too much like Marianne, her relationship with Nick too similar too Connell. Normal People might actually be a refinement of the ideas and characters in Conversations with Friends.
Overall, as a story centered on the complications of maturing friendships, self-destructive behavior, it's a decent story. The audiobook narrator leaves a lot to be desired.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity
Moderate: Alcoholism, Domestic abuse