crabbygirl reviewed Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Review of 'Conversations With Friends' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I continue to be mystified with the public's infatuation with Rooney; this is her debut novel and it's the same impossible 'empty' descriptors that maybe masquerade as deep. (p57 I lay on the bed in my clothes and wondered if I was going to start feeling some particular emotion, like sadness or regret. Instead I just felt a lot of things I didn't not how to identify) How can I take seriously a main character that is so divorced from herself? Is that not the definition of an unreliable narrator?
As a person, Frances is ridiculously unformed. Her sexual relationship with her best friend seems like a extension of her gratitude for (finally!) having a friend. their break-up is not her choice and their subsequent platonic relationship seems entirely directed by the friend. (It is more than symbolic that their poetry duo consists of her as the writer and …
I continue to be mystified with the public's infatuation with Rooney; this is her debut novel and it's the same impossible 'empty' descriptors that maybe masquerade as deep. (p57 I lay on the bed in my clothes and wondered if I was going to start feeling some particular emotion, like sadness or regret. Instead I just felt a lot of things I didn't not how to identify) How can I take seriously a main character that is so divorced from herself? Is that not the definition of an unreliable narrator?
As a person, Frances is ridiculously unformed. Her sexual relationship with her best friend seems like a extension of her gratitude for (finally!) having a friend. their break-up is not her choice and their subsequent platonic relationship seems entirely directed by the friend. (It is more than symbolic that their poetry duo consists of her as the writer and the friend as the on-stage performer.) She is uninterested in both her future and how she will pay for this future. Her taste of poverty when her father stops her allowance doesn't move her to confide in her friend, nor more seriously consider her future. The only person more yielding and pliable to their circumstance is the object of her new desire: the married Nick.
curiously, after she receives what she considers an edited-for-effect email from Nick's wife, it is not long after she uses the same affect when apologising to her friend for featuring her as an unflattering character in a story she's written. If this is a story of how Frances wrests control of her life from her friend, it's not doing the job it thinks. Frances is merely transferring value from the friend to Nick.
lastly, having lived in Dublin in the past, this passage was absolutely baffling (and indicative of how American oppressor discourse has infected the western world's academia): "Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No it is not me. It is others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself , do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labor of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes." Since when is Ireland a hotbed of white privilege? And if this is a real concern of the author, why not feature a person of colour in the pages of the actual book?