Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney
Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney
3 Rating(s)
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
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Conversations with Friends

Author: Sally Rooney

Narrator: Aoife McMahon

Unabridged: 8 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/11/2017


Synopsis

A sharply intelligent novel about friendship, lust, jealousy, and the unexpected complications of adulthood in the 21st century

Frances is a cool-headed and darkly observant young woman, vaguely pursuing a career in writing while studying in Dublin. Her best friend and comrade-in-arms is the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi. 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. 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.
 
Desperate 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. 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.

Art © Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY www.vagarights.com

About Sally Rooney

Irish born, new author, Sally Rooney, had her debut novel published in 2017, entitled Conversations with Friends. The debut novel was followed by Normal People, in 2018, and adapted into a TV series in 2020.

Rooney grew up in Castleberry, County Mayo, where her father was an employee of Telecom Eireann, and her mother was administrator of an art center. Rooney was elected a scholar at Trinity College Dublin, in 2011. She studied politics there, and completed a degree in American literature instead. She graduated with an M.A. in 2013. She is a self-described Marxist. Debating was her strong suit, as she became the top debater at the European University Debating Champions. She currently lives in Dublin.


Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on January 06, 2024

I have a debilitating rereading problem. It’s reached a concerning point -- seemingly 1 in 3 or 4 books I read is actually a reread. Previously I was way too picky about adding books to my to-read list to suffer a massive TBR issue, but now that I’m barely reading new books, the pile (which is a phys......more

Goodreads review by Elle on December 02, 2024

There’s a cliche in reviewing where you say something along these lines: “I wouldn’t like these characters in real life, but I found them compelling.” See, I don’t think that’s why this book works. I think this book works because in real life we would probably like these characters; respect their ta......more

Goodreads review by Sam on August 11, 2017

I didn't really respond well to Conversations with Friends. The writing itself is quite good in terms of realistic dialogue and description, but I found all of the characters entirely unlikable and hard to empathize with, very few with any positive animating traits, mostly just self-absorbed, narcis......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on April 11, 2020

My controversial take on this book is that it could also be titled Self-absorbed White People have Feelings Too. Before I get into that take, I do think Sally Rooney accomplishes quite a lot with her debut novel Conversations with Friends. The book follows Frances and her best friend Bobbi, who beco......more

Goodreads review by Jill on August 23, 2017

I’ve been thinking a lot about aging lately: the way our perspective changes and how our need for stability, trust and healthy relationships become so much more valued than intoxicating, crash-and-burn emotional roller-coasters of our younger years. I say this as means of introduction because while r......more


Quotes

“A writer of rare confidence, with a lucid, exacting style . . . But Rooney’s natural power is as a psychological portraitist. She is acute and sophisticated about the workings of innocence; the protagonist of this novel about growing up has no idea just how much of it she has left to do.”—The New Yorker

“Rooney has the gift of imbuing everyday life with a sense of high stakes…a novel of delicious frictions.”New York Magazine

"Rooney writes so well of the condition of being a young, gifted but self-destructive woman, both the mentality and physicality of it. She is alert to the invisible bars imprisoning the apparently free.”The Guardian

"A novelist to watch: An addictive debut, with nods to Tender is the Night, heralds a bright new talent.”—The Sunday Times

Conversations with Friends paints a nuanced, page-turning portrait of a whip-smart university student in the throes of an affair with an older married man.”—Zadie Smith, Elle

“Rooney has a magical ability to write scenes of such verisimilitude that even when little happens they’re suspenseful.”—Curtis Sittenfeld, The Week

“Sharp, funny, thought-provoking . . . a really great portrait of two young women as they’re figuring out how to be adults.”—Celeste Ng, "Late Night with Seth Meyers Podcast"

“This book. This book. I read it in one day. I hear I'm not alone.”Sarah Jessica Parker

“A coming-of-age story that’s weightier and wiser than you might expect.”Vulture

“Sally Rooney’s debut novel is a remarkably charming exploration of that very uncharming subject: the human ego . . . Conversations With Friends sparkles with controlled rhetoric. But it ends up emphasizing the truths exploding in the silences.”Slate

“In this searing, insightful debut, Rooney offers an unapologetic perspective on the vagaries of relationships . . . a treatise on married life, the impact of infidelity, the ramifications of one’s actions, and how the person one chooses to be with can impact one’s individuality.”Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Readers who enjoyed Belinda McKeon's Tender and Caitriona Lally's Eggshells will enjoy this exceptional debut.”Library Journal, starred review

“A smart, sexy, realistic portrayal of a woman finding herself.”Booklist, starred review

“The book of the summer.”Refinery29

"Fascinating, ferocious and shrewd. Sally Rooney has the sharpest eye for all of the most delicate cruelties of human interaction."—Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies, winner of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction


Awards

  • British Book Award
  • Desmond Elliott Prize
  • Folio Fiction/Poetry Awards
  • Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award