Conversations With Friends -

If you picked up Sally Rooney’s debut novel, Conversations with Friends , expecting a lighthearted romp through Dublin’s literary scene, you probably found yourself putting it down to stare at the wall for twenty minutes. You aren’t alone.

She wants us to think she is a cold, rational observer. She is not. She is a volcano trying to pass itself off as a flat screen. Let’s address the plot: Frances begins an affair with Nick, Melissa’s husband. However, Rooney refuses to write a steamy, taboo thriller. Instead, the affair is conducted via stilted emails, silent car rides, and conversations about Marxism.

But is this book just about two college students sleeping with a married couple? Or is it something much stranger, sharper, and more honest? Conversations with Friends

But it is real .

They used to date. Now they are just best friends who finish each other’s sentences and perform spoken word poetry together. They are a unit. When Frances spirals into the affair, Bobbi is the one who gets hurt. The jealousy, the codependency, and the unspoken "what if" between the two women is far more complex than the heterosexual drama. If you picked up Sally Rooney’s debut novel,

But the genius of the novel is that Frances is also watching us watching her. The novel is told in the first person, past tense. Frances is recounting a period of her life where she lost control, yet she does so with a clinical detachment that feels like a defense mechanism.

Frances is the "cool girl" archetype deconstructed. She watches her ex-girlfriend (and current best friend) Bobbi flirt with a glamorous older photographer named Melissa. She watches Melissa’s husband, Nick, suffer from depression and a failing acting career. She watches, analyzes, and files everything away. She is not

It captures the specific loneliness of being in your early twenties: the feeling that your body is betraying you, that your intellect is your only weapon, and that you are always performing for an audience that isn't there.

In one of the most devastating scenes, Nick tells Frances he loves her. Frances’ internal reaction is violent and emotional, but her external response is a flat: "Okay."