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Day 27- BOOK REVIEW- Conversations with Friends

So due to spending my time solely on the beach chilling and drinking cocktails I don’t really have an awful lot to say. 

 I have however had a chance to do a lot of reading so I thought today’s post could be a book review.

 Book title- Conversations with Friends.
Author- Sally Rooney


This book was Sally Ronneys debut novel. After all the hype around it and recommendations from friends to read it I finally picked it up. I have to say that I have really mixed feelings about the book.

I found the writing style really difficult to get on with. It felt a bit rushed and lacking of detail. This may have been intentional by Rooney who wanted this to maybe come across as more of a diary entry where small details and descriptions are always missing. The book did feel like it was something that Francis (the main protagonist) never meant to share. I often had to go back and re-read sections due to the way the book was written. For example the conversations between characters weren’t always clear and at points I was confused as to who was saying what. 

Because the book felt rushed as mentioned above and because of the lack of imagery I really struggled to fully visualise the characters. I also feel that because it is all from the view of one character (Francis) I felt curious as to how the others were feeling. As always with only hearing one side of the story you never really get the full picture. I feel that we missed out on getting to know the thoughts of Francis’ friends and family. 

Usually when I read books I feel something towards the characters however in this book I didn’t feel a certain way. The characters were written in a way which perfectly demonstrated both humanities goodness and also humanities flaws. 

At points I questioned myself asking, does Rooney really know how this book is going to end? Especially during the first part I didn’t quite think there was very much direction, it was also at points predictable and dull however there was a sense that something was going to happen . After all the build up from I didn’t feel like the plot in the second half of the book really have the impact I was hoping for. I was waiting for something shocking. However without introducing too many spoilers this book did do a fantastic job of bringing awareness to a very common condition: endometriosis. This was an interesting twist which I was not expecting. 

Additionally I did love the way that Rooney did bring different social and economic issues into the fold. This was done in an extremely clever way. I felt that Rooney had a great way of portraying issues which can be quite shocking and upsetting. I am not saying that the issues weren’t upsetting but rather the way that they were introduced in the book from the view of Francis was that this was obviously normal for Francis, there was an openness in the way that they were discussed with the reader, rather than being the taboo that they are often portrayed as. 

Overall I would say that for me this book had great intentions and did an excellent job around social and economic issues in Ireland. Personally I did not appreciate the writing style and at points had to put the book down and come back later. Rooney is obviously an intellectual writer and I am going to try and dig out some of her short stories where I imagine this style of writing would work well.


Overall rating: 3/5

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