'Conversations with Friends' is Sally Rooney's first book, and it instantly made the 26-year-old Trinity College graduate a world-famous writer. It's a novel that traveled the world with the speed of a Snapchat message. It's a text that raises the question: why do people talk so much, yet know neither themselves nor each other at all?
Frances, Bobby, Nick, and Melissa ask each other countless questions. Their relationships develop in real life and online, as they endlessly drink and talk, talk, talk. They discuss sex and friendship, art and literature, politics and gender, and, of course, each other. Young Frances openly tells us about her complicated relationship with Nick, the man married to her friend.
Yes, of course, you can read this novel as a book about infidelity, growing up, and the complexities of intimacy. But in reality, it's poignant literature about the problems of personality and human communication. There's a vast gap between who we are and the picture we paint of ourselves to others. This book is about how easy it is to confuse self-deception with self-knowledge.