Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

 

Conversations With Friends

aka how to be sad and pretentious while also being in "love."

    The more I read Sally Rooney, the more I am starting to discover that if I want to be an IRL Sally Rooney character, all I have to do is become uber intellectual and pretentious, eat nothing but dry toast and black coffee, indulge in copious amounts of wine, smoke a pack a day, and become involved in a relationship so toxic and unbearable that I become supremely upset and lost, yet bask in said relationship because I have inextricably linked my life to this person. Sometimes multiple people. 

    I don't know; there is just something about reading a Sally Rooney novel that makes you feel smarter than when you started. I think it is the sheer force of her bleak yet rather brilliant characterization in her novels that makes you, too, feel like you are surrounded by brilliant and tortured intellectuals with shitty friends with whom you are mutually terrible. It may also be that you may tend to feel better about yourself.

    When I read Normal People, I was severely put off. I thought Connell and Marianne were both horrible people in a horrid love affair, and the whole thing just seemed terribly droll and irritable, and to top it all off, I did not even have any emotional connection to either due to the aforementioned toxicity of their personalities. I have a friend who feels the same way, and when we speak about our mutual dislike of the book regarding its popularity, we always say that it would have done better if it was not marketed as such a tragic love story. I am an avid romance reader, and I can say with the most sincere certainty that Normal People is absolutely NOT a romance novel. Obviously, that being said, I was highly cautious going into this one because I was so put off by the other, but the same aforementioned friend said she liked it better, and I have to agree. Going into this book with the right mindset and expectations severely heightened my appreciation for this book.  

    Quite frankly, I say appreciation because I don't know if I have another word to adequately describe how I feel. I don't love this book, I don't feel extremely attached to the characters, and I don't have the feelings I do when I read a good book that I can't put down. Instead, I am reading this book with an almost philosophical detachment, going to put the book down and then discovering I can't because I am hooked, but in a way that is being hooked to watching horrible people be horrible to each other. Yet, I really appreciate some of the insight and can't stop myself from reading. My feelings are complicated, which is fitting because so is the book. 

    For me, and I am sure so many others (because, after all, isn't this the whole point?), this book is about the characters and not the plot. *spoilers* I genuinely dislike each character in this book; following their lives and their relationships is as though you are watching a train wreck, it is so bad, and yet you cannot look away. I find Frances extraordinarily pretentious and self-righteous as both a narrator and a friend to the others in this book. She has this air of entitlement about her, such as never wishing to work and feeling as though she does not have to, and yet she still is incredibly jealous of those with wealth around her and uses it as a weapon against them. It was as though she was putting up a front at the start, but towards the end, I almost felt as though she had morphed into this front, and it was rather unlikeable. 

    Bobbi is also a terrible friend yet in her own way. She is, however, the character with the most growth throughout, and for that, I will have to give her some credit. She starts as the friend who would basically sell your secrets to climb the social ladder, and her need to win over Melissa is almost unbearable. She is extremely flippant, and her conversations border on confrontational, which is all chalked up to be quirky indifference, something that is ok because she is deemed beautiful. Both girls have a wildly "fuck the patriarchy" mindset, but it's not always productive for anyone else but themselves. Their relationship's foundation is a romantic relationship, which produces a weird vibe when it comes to their interactions; it adds a whole other layer. 

    However, they are young girls of 21 and should be afforded room to make these mistakes and choices, even if their general personalities are kind of terrible. On the other hand, Nick and Melissa need to get it together. Melissa is a jealous, narcissistic, vindictive bitch who relies on two young women to make her feel validated and successful. Her letter to Frances towards the end of the book is a true testament to her personality, and how she refers to her husband, of who she is clearly jealous, is quite terrible. On the other hand, Nick does not do much to prove his wife wrong. His entire relationship with Frances is emotionally complex. While neither communicates with the other, he takes certain liberties with the position he is with his wife and Frances when it comes to his own happiness. The fact that they are still going to do this (again) at the end of the book is frustrating and fitting because what else did I expect to happen. 

    Even if I generally dislike everyone, I do have sympathy for many of their situations, such as Frances with her father and her diagnosis. I also generally enjoyed the complexity and toxicity of this entire situation in its own right. While often pretentious and disagreeable, it was with almost avid delight that I read about these characters and their choices. It definitely gives much to think about. It is rather delectable to read about such an obscure and intimate group of people with a delicate and untraditional relation to one another. 

    Overall, I gave this book four stars because I think me hating everyone in this book really adds to the vibe of me liking it. I still hate the lack of quotation marks, it leaves me feeling rather detached, but in the end, I feel as though this adds to my general perception of the novel, and I think that it would not nearly be as good with quotations. If you want to be very moody and pretentious for an evening, this book is for you.