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mouse_teeth's reviews
251 reviews
Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
4.0
Remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world.
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
4.0
Rooney’s ability to portray relationships and the distance between people is unlike any other writer I’ve read since de Beauvoir. Perfectly demonstrating existential solipsism and the “human condition”, combined with the metaphysical nature of illness is very de Beauvoirean, a fact I feel Rooney must have acknowledged by naming Frances after Francois from de Beauvoir’s She Came to Stay.
This book is great, although for me it at times felt like a dress rehearsal for Normal People, a book which managed to achieve a similar metaphysical exploration, but with more clarity. This is by no means an insult; if I’d have read Conversation With Friends before Normal People I think the progression would have been beautiful, and I highly recommend that anyone who hasn’t read either to read them that way around.
Those who have said “I don’t like any of the characters” in either Conversations with Friends or Normal People, I suspect would not like anyone had they access to their inner life.
This book is great, although for me it at times felt like a dress rehearsal for Normal People, a book which managed to achieve a similar metaphysical exploration, but with more clarity. This is by no means an insult; if I’d have read Conversation With Friends before Normal People I think the progression would have been beautiful, and I highly recommend that anyone who hasn’t read either to read them that way around.
Those who have said “I don’t like any of the characters” in either Conversations with Friends or Normal People, I suspect would not like anyone had they access to their inner life.