Conversations with Friends: 'Brilliant, funny and startling.' GUARDIAN

I gave ‘Normal People’ and ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’ a solid 4 stars for each so my expectations were pretty high when I finally got round to reading Rooney’s first book ‘Conversations with Friends’.This book is the story of four people and the shifting relationships between them. Frances and Bobbi are students in Dublin, they are ex-lovers and remain close friends. Frances is introverted and a talented writer, while Bobbi is an extrovert and the more gifted performer. Melissa is a photographer who wants to profile the two young women and she invites them to a party at her home, where they meet her Actor husband, Nick. Bobbi fancies Melissa and Frances is drawn to Nick. Through the novel, each goes through ups and downs and the relationships between them are equally volatile. We also learn about their troubled pasts and present and that Frances is the product of an alcoholic father, an enabler mother and she feels like a damaged person who deserves nothing.With respect to Frances, she is outwardly cold, snarky and aloof but she is also insecure, damaged and sensitive. She might be difficult but she isn't unlovable and I found this of all of the characters. I didn’t necessarily like them all but I understood them and I think that they were well written. I felt that the flow of the book was good and, as with the other Rooney stories, this isn’t a plot heavy book, but that isn't the point. This is a book about relationships and those relationships are excellently written. The portrayal of friendship between Frances and Bobbi feels completely genuine and realistic and the sparks that fly between Nick and Frances generated by something between love and hate was interesting. The writing style is flat but functional and I felt that the voice of this disengaged, alienated young woman came across as completely authentic.This felt so typically Rooney to me. I was welcomed into the story and I felt like I was reuniting with old friends. I've seen a number of critical reviews and while I can appreciate some of the comments, I still think this book is terrific and I think it is my favourite Rooney book so far. I am excited to continue reading her work.

For someone who watched the BBC series and enjoyed it, I liked this book slightly more than I liked the series.I will say that the first part of the book I did find to be a bit slow and therefore made it a bit boring at times. The second part, however, was much better and became much more interesting. I also became more invested in the characters.Frances' character is the only one I feel like is actually relatable. That quiet, cold and aloof person who's different from other people. The different things she goes through, the problems she has to deal with. The distant and struggling relationship she has with her parents, her feelings for Bobbi and her relationship with Nick, and how she starts to feel about him. The other characters were likeable (more or less). They all had their own conflicts they were dealing with, which made them relatable and made you care for them (to an extent).The friendship/relationship between Frances and Bobbi was sincere and true. The way they are around each other, the things they do. The things they share with each other. As well as the underlying fact that they obviously still deeply care for each other.The relationship between Frances and Nick, however, was very complex. There were moments where the two of them really cared for each other, and then there were moments where it felt like they miscommunicated with each other, causing things to get even more complicated.The way Sally Rooney did the writing in this was slightly different from Normal People. And it surprised me a bit.In the end, I did enjoy Conversations with Friends. I would say I enjoyed it slightly more than the BBC series adaptation. I would also agree with this book being a strong debut for Sally Rooney.

I bought this book because of the rave reviews even though the synopsis didn’t suggest a tale I would normally enjoy. I was disappointed for several reasons. The first few pages seemed to have been written principally to introduce a couple of characters and to set the scene,. The style suggested that the author would return to the pages to add some literary touches, rather than leave it in a rather chunky format. Nevertheless the first half of the book was enjoyable, introducing the main characters and developing the plot. The second half reversed that. The plot, such as it was, was simple, the characters pretentious and, in the protagonist’s case, self obsessed. There were sub plots that went nowhere, the dialogue became somewhat tortured - not helped by its formatting - and eventually the book simply peters out.

I bought this and the author's other novel, Normal People, at the same time due to the media interested generated by the TV programme recently produced of the latter. I was a bit shocked that I was seeing quite a lot of negative reviews on Amazon for the novels, as they don't tend to make TV programmes from bad novels. Anyway I thought I'd have to decide for myself given this tantalising paradox, and was therefore equally shocked to discover how excellent they are, and delighted that I wasn't put off. Some of the other reviews commented on how unconventionally written they were, which I understand in a small way, but that's what I loved about them both. And it wasn't so unconventional as to make them incomprehensible or inaccessible; they were both very fresh and I read them both over the period of a few days (the only very slight confusion arising from a character called Marianne appearing in both of them!) Conversation with Friends specifically definitely felt like a very accurate and relatable commentary on modern relationships, and was completely un-put-downable (the only time I did was to pick up Normal People.) The characters and scenarios were very real. I hope others aren't put off by some of the crazy reviews on here! Definitely give it a read, one of the best books I have read for a long time.

I have to mention that I am a Sally Rooney fan who loved her book "Normal People." So this is the template by which I will judge this and future novels she publishes. So "Conversations with Friends" is like "Normal People" times five. Lots of British college kids, learning about life one mistake at a time. Now, just to make this novel really fun to read, the only punctuation marks used throughout are the period and the comma and capitalization. Now think about that. Two people are having a conversation, but there is no way to differentiate between their spoken words and the narration other than the readers' familuration with the English language. It made the book very interesting to read because you also had to intuit everyone's feelings as well from the word salad of prose. Now, I know that most readers will read my comments and think that I didn't like the book, but I very much liked this book and am recommending it. I just wanted you to know what reading delights await you.

The media could not be loaded. Dei 5 estrelas pela entrega, não pelo livro, que eu considerei 3,5 estrelas, não chega nem aos pés de pessoas normais, mas é muito bom também. Chegou antes do previsto e sem amassados😃👍

Llego en muy buenas condiciones

Super book , I loved it and found it hard to put down. I liked it more than Intermezzo ( just a little ) Reading the book for me was like interacting with new interesting friends as they navigated their relationships.

loved the cover and the book