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vereadsbooks 's review for:
Conversations with Friends
by Sally Rooney
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. I need to relax and let things go. I should experiment with drugs.”
What makes a book an all-time favorite? Is it the writing, the story, the characters, or the plot? Is it a mixture of all?
I keep wondering about this after I read the first chapter of this novel. Let me tell you what I was feeling while I read it. I felt this tickling of excitement to relive this reading experience again. I know that it's impossible to have the experience of reading a book for the first time again. But, I wanted to enjoy every scene and moment of the story again and again. Naturally, I couldn't wait to reread it and see what else this story could give me.
Conversations with friends became one of my favorites book of all time. But it does make me wonder if the other books I consider to be all-time favorites really are, compared to this one.
“I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.”
I enjoyed the book, and it surprised me by how much I did. I thought I wasn't smart enough to understand it. But I'm so glad I read it. After all, I found one of the books that touched my soul.
“Everyone’s always going through something, aren’t they? That’s life, basically. It’s just more and more things to go through.”
Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect.
“You can love more than one person, she said. That's arguable. Why is it any different from having more than one friend? You're friends with me and you also have other friends, does that mean you don't really value me? I don't have other friends, I said.”
Sally Rooney has a unique writing style that may not be for everyone. But I found her prose so direct and captivating. It's like having a raw and real conversation between you and your friends. I don't know if that makes sense. I have this strange feeling that I found another kindred spirit. I don't know! Can this author read my unconscious mind?
“You think everyone you like is special, she said. I'm just a normal person. When you get to like someone, you make them feel like they're different from everyone else. You're doing it with Nick, you did it with me once.”
The book touches on themes, such as mental health, chronic pain (endometriosis), and love. But the heart of the book is the relationships between the characters. I was captivated by the dynamics of their relationships. It was really good to see how each of them affects the relationship with the other.
“I laughed to myself although there was no one there to see me. I loved when he was available to me like this, when our relationship was like a Word document that we were writing and editing together, or a long private joke that nobody else could understand. I liked to feel that he was my collaborator. I liked to think of him waking up at night and thinking of me.”
I love when characters have deep and meaningful relationships that change their lives. The book has that. Frances and Nick have a very deep and true connection. And yet they cannot show or communicate those feelings which lead to misunderstandings. But their relationship changes them and everyone around them.
“I was like an empty cup, which Nick had emptied out, and now I had to look at what had spilled out of me: all my delusional beliefs about my own value and my pretensions to being a kind of person I wasn’t. While I was full of these things I couldn’t see them. Now that I was nothing, only an empty glass, I could see everything about myself.”
I love to see how their beliefs and misbeliefs marked their actions. Frances is self-center, judgemental, and arrogant. She struggles to show her feelings and push away her partner. She is unable to connect emotionally with others.
““You underestimate your own power so you don’t have to blame yourself for treating other people badly. You tell yourself stories about it. Oh well, Bobbi’s rich, Nick’s a man, I can’t hurt these people. If anything they’re out to hurt me and I’m defending myself.””
Nick has low self-esteem, and he can't believe someone can like him. He is attracted to women who are smarter than him, which reveals a lot about him. He assumes a submissive role in his marriage and in his relationship with France.
“Nick is not primarily attracted to good-looking or morally worthy people. He likes partners who take complete responsibility for all his decisions, that's all. You will not be able to draw a sustainable sense of self-respect from this relationship you're in. I'm sure you find his total acquiescence charming now, but over the course of a marriage, it actually becomes exhausting. Fighting with him is impossible because he's pathologically submissive, & you can't scream at him without hating yourself. I know because today I screamed at him for a long time.”
Rooney presents these complex and unlikeable characters in a truthful and raw way. Make it hard not to care about them.
I love this book!!! I could spend hours and hours talking about it.
What makes a book an all-time favorite? Is it the writing, the story, the characters, or the plot? Is it a mixture of all?
I keep wondering about this after I read the first chapter of this novel. Let me tell you what I was feeling while I read it. I felt this tickling of excitement to relive this reading experience again. I know that it's impossible to have the experience of reading a book for the first time again. But, I wanted to enjoy every scene and moment of the story again and again. Naturally, I couldn't wait to reread it and see what else this story could give me.
Conversations with friends became one of my favorites book of all time. But it does make me wonder if the other books I consider to be all-time favorites really are, compared to this one.
“I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.”
I enjoyed the book, and it surprised me by how much I did. I thought I wasn't smart enough to understand it. But I'm so glad I read it. After all, I found one of the books that touched my soul.
“Everyone’s always going through something, aren’t they? That’s life, basically. It’s just more and more things to go through.”
Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect.
“You can love more than one person, she said. That's arguable. Why is it any different from having more than one friend? You're friends with me and you also have other friends, does that mean you don't really value me? I don't have other friends, I said.”
Sally Rooney has a unique writing style that may not be for everyone. But I found her prose so direct and captivating. It's like having a raw and real conversation between you and your friends. I don't know if that makes sense. I have this strange feeling that I found another kindred spirit. I don't know! Can this author read my unconscious mind?
“You think everyone you like is special, she said. I'm just a normal person. When you get to like someone, you make them feel like they're different from everyone else. You're doing it with Nick, you did it with me once.”
The book touches on themes, such as mental health, chronic pain (endometriosis), and love. But the heart of the book is the relationships between the characters. I was captivated by the dynamics of their relationships. It was really good to see how each of them affects the relationship with the other.
“I laughed to myself although there was no one there to see me. I loved when he was available to me like this, when our relationship was like a Word document that we were writing and editing together, or a long private joke that nobody else could understand. I liked to feel that he was my collaborator. I liked to think of him waking up at night and thinking of me.”
I love when characters have deep and meaningful relationships that change their lives. The book has that. Frances and Nick have a very deep and true connection. And yet they cannot show or communicate those feelings which lead to misunderstandings. But their relationship changes them and everyone around them.
“I was like an empty cup, which Nick had emptied out, and now I had to look at what had spilled out of me: all my delusional beliefs about my own value and my pretensions to being a kind of person I wasn’t. While I was full of these things I couldn’t see them. Now that I was nothing, only an empty glass, I could see everything about myself.”
I love to see how their beliefs and misbeliefs marked their actions. Frances is self-center, judgemental, and arrogant. She struggles to show her feelings and push away her partner. She is unable to connect emotionally with others.
““You underestimate your own power so you don’t have to blame yourself for treating other people badly. You tell yourself stories about it. Oh well, Bobbi’s rich, Nick’s a man, I can’t hurt these people. If anything they’re out to hurt me and I’m defending myself.””
Nick has low self-esteem, and he can't believe someone can like him. He is attracted to women who are smarter than him, which reveals a lot about him. He assumes a submissive role in his marriage and in his relationship with France.
“Nick is not primarily attracted to good-looking or morally worthy people. He likes partners who take complete responsibility for all his decisions, that's all. You will not be able to draw a sustainable sense of self-respect from this relationship you're in. I'm sure you find his total acquiescence charming now, but over the course of a marriage, it actually becomes exhausting. Fighting with him is impossible because he's pathologically submissive, & you can't scream at him without hating yourself. I know because today I screamed at him for a long time.”
Rooney presents these complex and unlikeable characters in a truthful and raw way. Make it hard not to care about them.
I love this book!!! I could spend hours and hours talking about it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Blood, Toxic friendship, Alcohol