Readers who enjoyed Belinda McKeon's Tender and Caitriona Lally's Eggshells will enjoy this exceptional debut.' - Library Journal A smart, sexy, realistic portrayal of a woman finding herself.' - Booklist

Throughout, Rooney's descriptive eye lends beauty and veracity to this complex and vivid story.' - Publishers Weekly In this searing, insightful debut, Rooney offers an unapologetic perspective on the vagaries of relationships. The writing was not enough to redeem the lack of meaningful story arc.' - Francesca Baker

It meanders, seemingly without plot or purpose, between deep conversations and affairs to land on a treatise about endometriosis. ' Conversations With Friends left me entirely baffled, despite its great reviews from elsewhere. Written with gem-like precision and marked by a sly sense of humor, Conversations with Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth, and the messy edges of female friendship. However amusing and ironic Frances and Nick's flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy, and Frances's friendship with Bobbi begins to fracture. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally, terribly, with Bobbi.ĭesperate to reconcile her inner life to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment. At a local poetry performance one night, Frances and Bobbi catch the eye of Melissa, a well-known photographer, and as the girls are then gradually drawn into Melissa's world, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband, Nick. Her best friend and comrade-in-arms is the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi. A sharply intelligent novel about friendship, lust, jealousy, and the unexpected complications of adulthood in the 21st century.įrances is a cool-headed and darkly observant young woman, vaguely pursuing a career in writing while studying in Dublin.

Conversations with friends book review