conversations with friends by sally rooney

Frances asserts her natural right to chase whatever relationship combination offers the feeling of security that eludes her-regardless of its complexity, impermanence or essential impossibility. Rooney unties her characters’ complicated sexual and emotional knots with a matter-of-factness that neutralizes any moral qualms. When Melissa and Bobbi find out, it doesn’t put an end to the affair after the initial shock, the knowledge deepens those interactions as well. Though she’s never been with a man before, she’s attracted to Melissa’s husband Nick, and the two start an affair whose genuine mutual affection and need surprises both of them.

As they get to know Melissa, the glimpse into her well-appointed life - handsome husband, fulfilling creative career, beautiful home, frequent trips to France - exposes an avenue that’s potentially ahead for them.īut Frances isn’t sure what she wants to pursue - or, more urgently, who she wants to pursue.

Melissa, a thirtysomething photographer with established bona fides in the art scene, asks to profile Frances and Bobbi for a magazine. When the book opens, Frances and Bobbi are performing spoken word poetry together at local clubs a few nights a week the summer before their final year at Trinity College, Dublin. When we meet Frances and her best friend Bobbi, it’s years after they were girlfriend and girlfriend in high school, an arrangement that alienated Frances from the rest of her peers but catapulted her into the closest, most meaningful relationship she ever had. Those combinations, as much as the conversations, energize this novel.

Conversations with friends by sally rooney