As I go deeper and get a better understanding of the characters, the cast of Conversations with Friends becomes both more loveable and exhausting. Bobbi is a narcissistic pain in the ass, a character who would have fit in at Teddy Wayne’s Harvard. Nick is ridiculous but I like how Rooney seems to be setting him up for some sort of revelation or breakdown; he would fit into Chris Abani’s world. Frances is the “writer” who does some sort of performance poetry which she describes as ugly, but which is more likely just as sweetly trite. Melissa, often in an ethereal absence, seems like the character to appreciate. I feel she may know things the others don’t and be the key to understanding Nick and Frances.
Above all, this is a novel of youth and of growth. Everything is still wonderful. I miss that, obviously, having grown to full adulthood. I remember the loss of innocence, not merely the sexual one but the one about horrible compromises I thought I had to make. We betray ourselves for so little, and I can only hope these essentially carefree characters, even as fictive beings, do not go through what I went through. However, if they do, I wonder how Rooney will handle it. She’s so good at some details and so bad at others.
In any case, I also soon learn that Rooney is extremely popular, so I may have stumbled into a beach read or such. I’m curious how the affairs being set up play out. Rooney has great touch and rhythm. The book reads a bit like a diary: the details might mean something, or they might not, but they are what the narrative voice wants to record. Bobbi, being a lesbian, finds Nick boring. Frances, not being a lesbian, is intrigued. It’s a bit on the nose but gracefully described and played out. Yet if Nick were really compelling, he would be compelling beyond his mere gender role: a fascinating human is a fascinating human. He aggravates through his nearly coy passivity; there must be some secret behind his pathos.
As I reach the halfway point, some of these questions are answered. In what is perhaps the climactic chapter, Frances first answers Valerie’s impertinence with direct reference to the title: “I thought we were all friends.” As we have seen, they are not. This is a story of people thrown together by ambition and conceit and locality. They are making the best of it; Rooney is not a social critic but a storyteller. That night, part one closes as Bobbi discovers the truth of the affair. These paired events are very deliberately game changers; Rooney is saying the information game, and thus in turn, roles and expectations, are central to her worldview.
We’ve been building to this moment, and it is only then that I realize the novel is a disguised bildungsroman, the classic coming of age tale. Bobbi, who has been lording her detached and girlish lesbianism over her more subdued and self-doubting ex-lover and victim, must come to grips with Frances growing up and experiencing the real trauma and joy of sex with her biological counterpart. Frances must realize that while this is life changing, her man of choice is weak and beaten, literally hiding under a diagnosis of depression, a social veil of pneumonia, and the safety of a mediocre marriage. He likes Frances on top and can’t express himself, riddled with some existential guilt. He is untrustworthy yet we have turned ourselves over to him.
Will we find what everyone’s problem is? Will Bobbi react or retreat in the face of reality and adulthood? Will Melissa finally play a less sinister role? It’s all very interesting, because it’s a well told story full of detail. Details matter.
We find out Melissa’s deal soon enough: she is putting on a show for Valerie. I should have seen the relationship more clearly, given the theater: it’s Valerie who contracts Melissa’s thin journalism. Melissa and Nick humble themselves in order to hold on to a dead marriage but one with nice linens. The characters can refer to late-stage capitalism and voice all the ghost words of resentment but having the character to resist the world is as rare as someone who actually read Kapital I & II. It’s not all opium and poetry, I can tell you.
Rooney doubles down on accidentally mocking her characters’ sophomoric political views twenty pages later, just when I am starting to like them again. Frances decides to look back at the record of her instant messages with Bobbi, where we are treated to a discourse on love’s relationship and servitude to capitalism. The problem is, Rooney also demonstrates how they each have unique characters who are not poisoned at all by the market and the polis. The kitsch of foolish politics instead remains merely kitsch. It’s all sweet and European and quite catching these days. I recently watched Beef on Netflix where we tart up an equally strong story with the same intellectual perfume.
Fortunately, we soon escape from this sort of discourse into the much darker and compelling story of Frances’ father and mother. Here Rooney emerges to shine again, describing so well the odd triangle of a disappointed wife, a drunk father, and a daughter in between. Freed from teenage political angst, we see a real family at play. It hurts.
It’s been a real relief to be able to read without the anxiety Loner put into me. There’s still tension, of course. In a sense, I’ve once again chosen well, even if the overpowering relevancy of my book choices seems to have paused. Maybe I will be wrong about this: that would be a spectacular twist. With one-third to go, I suspect something big with Nick and Melissa will be just enough fireworks for a satisfying ending.
Moving this stuff to Substack.
