“Conversations with Friends” by Sally Rooney

Rooney has written a novel for the age. Set in contemporary Dublin, it is narrated by a twenty-one year old lesbian communist poet, just finishing up at university. Her direct narration is sparingly interspersed with chunks of email, texts, and instant message chains. Tinder plays a cameo-role. The plot revolves around the narrator, Francis, her ex-girlfriend/still best-friend, Bobbi, and their new friends, Melissa and Nick, a married couple in their thirties, one a photographer/writer, the other a B-movie/theatre actor. The casual flirting, biting sarcasm, hidden jealousies, intellectual one up-man-ship, and sexual tensions quickly flow between and across the couples. “Bobbi wanted me to know that she had been in touch with Melissa when I hadn’t. It did impress me, which she wanted it to, but I also felt bad. I knew Melissa like Bobbi more than she liked me, and I didn’t know how to join in their new friendship without debasing myself for their attention…. Bobbi did come over that night, though she didn’t mention Melissa at all. I knew that she was being strategic, and that she wanted me to ask, so I didn’t. This sounds more passive-aggressive than it really was.” Much of the interplay in all these relationships revolve around the idea of status and power, often unspoken. “I noticed that Nick had dropped my name into conversation, as if to show that he remembered me from last time we talked. Of course, I remembered his name too, but he was older and somewhat famous, so I found his attention very flattering.” Much of the action also seems much like a giant pose. Everyone is trying so hard, while playing that their lives are lived so effortlessly. “I wrote a sample message, and then deleted the draft in case I might accidentally hit send. Then I wrote the same thing over again.” Every detail of technological protocol could be misinterpreted and, therefore, was fraught with unsaid meaning. “I read his e-mail again several times. I was relieved he had put the whole thing in lower case like he always did. It would have been dramatic to introduce capitalization at such a moment of tension.” Rooney is at her best when getting into the mind of the post-modern student, playing at being a communist, feminist intellectual. “Bobbi and I walked along underused paths kicking leaves and talking about things like the idea of landscape painting. Bobbi thought the fetishization of “untouched nature” was intrinsically patriarchal and nationalistic.” Relationships with friends are always hard. They are even harder when trying to wear a mask of a constantly put-together adult. “It made me want to step on her foot very hard and then look in her face and deny that I had done it. No, I would say. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And she would look at me and know that I was evil and insane.” The plot of the novel is almost besides the point. It is the interaction between the characters which is so powerful. Each person wants to be smart, witty, and sexy. But more importantly, they want to be though of as smart, witty, and sexy to all the others in their social circle. “I felt sorry for all of us, like we were just little children pretending to be adults.”