After the trauma of Loner I need something light. With the hard-core Tampa by Alissa Nutting also on the starter menu, Conversations with Friends seems like the choice.
Sally Rooney is a popular writer. I got this recommendation from a YouTuber. While the influencer didn’t describe its negative qualities very well, the positives she promised such as readability and linguistic aptitude are real. Conversations with Friends is a fine book so far.
Rooney has a very straightforward approach where she uses emotionally attuned language to negotiate the endless foibles of well-adjusted people still in love with themselves and, importantly, their own desires. The action revolves around Melissa, who writes hip personality profiles and takes photographs. Melissa is attracted to Bobbi, the narrator’s carefree girlfriend. Meanwhile the narrator herself, Frances, is more introverted and quietly interested in Melissa’s husband. Frances is a little stung that Bobbi is once again the center of attention and plays this during a heavy-handed flirting with the somewhat defeated Nick.
The vapidity of these characters and their bourgeois artistic vanities is a little strange after trawling the depths of Loner and The Secret History of Las Vegas. Still, it’s not a clear comedy like Lionel Lancet was, but an entirely different approach, a sort of novel of emotions so cleanly written you could say it is perpendicular to the so-called Novel of Ideas.
As a poker player, I am very comfortable with ambiguities and probabilities. I can handle risk and paradox, and this book definitely calls upon these strengths and those ideas. The characters are awful; on the other hand, I like their stories. There is so much delicately painted realism here. Going by the absurd epigraphs, Rooney is an overpraised writer but a very real one. Much like Teddy Wayne and Daniel Backer, she has a nose for interesting, even exquisite detail. The contemporary writer, based on my small Book Club sample, excels in this.
Conversations with Friends is a very feminine book; this point can’t really be avoided. It is absolutely flush with emotions and a kind of perpetual lack of discernment. It has made me think about how liking characters is not important: that they are compelling, even irritating, is far more important. I like this reminder.
Another interesting point of Rooney’s storytelling is that she can project all of the plot right away, really just have no surprises, and yet make it all work. Rooney performs this magic so well because the feeling of what is happening is expertly conveyed. For instance, even though the characters are often not particularly sexual, their version of sexuality is communicated so clearly and convincingly. This is a book about the human experience, not ideas or drama.
As Frances and Nick begin their inevitable affair, I am at first thrown back into the distress of having lost many happy loving relationships. It is a well told story of awkward romance. Nick is a bit of a repressed goof and not much of a lover, but Frances and the author seem to like this. It’s moving and painful.
That said, when Frances tells him her life goal is to destroy capitalism and he worries over owning the house and the spoons, the powerful effect is dispelled: these are silly people, we are reminded. Nick is portrayed comically as an “older man” when he is only just thirty-two, repressed and childlike and preternaturally good looking. Bobbi is even worse than Melissa or the new pairing, being aggressively naive and stupid. They are all basically shitty to each other, these friends. Yet getting over that and loving the characters more as children of their time and place, creatures of the European dollhouse, the reader might even accept that we need novels about silly people. After all, who isn’t a fool?
There’s a lot more to say, but this series is about reading. Does Conversations with Friends interact with my life the way the others did? Yes, but in a quieter, more melancholic way. There are no daggers here, just the pin and needle reminders of the spoiled and deluded youth we all once were.
Moving this series to Substack here.
The choice between Sally Rooney and “Tampa” is certainly an interesting one
Going in cold for each book, not too sure.