Conversations with Friends

Last updated

Conversations with Friends
Conversations with Friends (Rooney novel).png
First edition cover
Author Sally Rooney
Audio read byAoife McMahon
LanguageEnglish
Genrelove, romance
Publisher Faber & Faber
Publication date
25 May 2017
Publication placeIreland
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages336
ISBN 978-0-571-33312-7
OCLC 1031891111
823/.92
LC Class PR6118.O59 C66 2017

Conversations with Friends is the 2017 debut novel by the Irish author Sally Rooney, about two young women who become involved with an older couple in Dublin's literary scene. The novel was published by Faber and Faber and received critical acclaim. A television adaptation, also called Conversations with Friends , was released in 2022.

Contents

Background

The book was completed whilst Rooney was still studying to write and complete her master's degree in American literature. [1] The book was subject to a seven-party auction for the publishing rights. [1] Rights were eventually sold in 12 countries. [2]

The novel was published in June 2017 by Faber and Faber. [1] It was nominated for the 2018 Dylan Thomas Prize [3] and the 2018 Folio Prize. [4]

Plot

In Dublin, college students Frances (the narrator) and her best friend and ex-girlfriend Bobbi are noticed by Melissa, an essayist and photographer in her late thirties, when they are performing spoken-word poetry. Melissa invites them home, where they meet her husband, Nick, an actor. Their four lives become increasingly entangled as Frances begins an affair with Nick, and Bobbi and Melissa grow closer.

Reception

Conversations with Friends received positive reviews. [5] Overall, critics enjoyed Rooney's prose, clarity, and sharp characters. According to Book Marks, the book received "positive" reviews based on eleven critic reviews with six being "rave" and four being "positive" and one being "mixed". [6] [7]

Writing for The New Yorker , Alexandra Schwartz praises Rooney, noting that "she writes with a rare, thrilling confidence, in a lucid and exacting style uncluttered with the sort of steroidal imagery and strobe flashes of figurative language that so many dutifully literary novelists employ." Schwartz continues, "one wonderful aspect of Rooney's consistently wonderful novel is the fierce clarity with which she examines the self-delusion that so often festers alongside presumed self-knowledge." [8] The Guardian similarly praised the author, noting how "Rooney writes so well of the condition of being a young, gifted but self-destructive woman, both the mentality and physicality of it. She is alert to the invisible bars imprisoning the apparently free." [9] Reviewing for Slate, Katy Waldman described how "Sally Rooney is a planter of small surprises, sowing them like landmines. They relate to behavior and psychology—characters zigging when you expect them to zag, from passivity to sudden aggression and back." [10] Waldman further applauds the novel, noting that "Rooney herself is acute and sensitive—she may have pinned these fragile creatures to a board, but her eye is not cruel. Bobbi, Frances, Nick, and Melissa excel at endearing banter and hesitant, vulnerable disclosure. They are all thrillingly sharp, hyperverbal." [10]

Television adaptation

After the success of the streaming adaptation of Normal People (2020), based on Rooney's second novel of the same name, Hulu/BBC Three announced their intention to develop a television adaptation of Conversations with Friends. Director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Alice Birch were attached to the project, which was released in May of 2022. The cast includes Alison Oliver as Frances, Sasha Lane as Bobbi, Jemima Kirke as Melissa, and Joe Alwyn as Nick. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miriam Toews</span> Canadian writer (born 1964)

Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Toews is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

Nicholas Laird is a Northern Irish novelist and poet.

Rachel Cusk is a British novelist and writer.

Gwendoline Riley is an English writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheryl Strayed</span> American writer (born 1968)

Cheryl Strayed is an American writer and podcast host. She has written four books: the novel Torch (2006) and the nonfiction books Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012), Tiny Beautiful Things (2012) and Brave Enough (2015). Wild, the story of Strayed's 1995 hike up the Pacific Crest Trail, is an international bestseller and was adapted into the 2014 Academy Award-nominated film Wild.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire Keegan</span> Irish writer (born 1968)

Claire Keegan is an Irish writer known for her short stories, which have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, Granta, and The Paris Review.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Kushner</span> American writer (born 1968)

Rachel Kushner is an American writer, known for her novels Telex from Cuba (2008), The Flamethrowers (2013), and The Mars Room (2018).

Polly Dunbar is an English author-illustrator.

Francis Spufford FRSL is an English author and teacher of writing whose career has seen him shift gradually from non-fiction to fiction. His first novel Golden Hill received critical acclaim and numerous prizes including the Costa Book Award for a first novel, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Ondaatje Prize. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

The Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award is an annual award for Irish authors of fiction, established in 1995. It was previously known as the Kerry Ingredients Book of the Year Award (1995–2000), the Kerry Ingredients Irish Fiction Award (2001–2002), and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award (2003-2011).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eimear McBride</span> Irish novelist

Eimear McBride is an Irish novelist, whose debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

Alex Murphy is an Irish actor. He is best known for his role as Conor MacSweeney in the 2016, comedy film The Young Offenders, for which he received an IFTA nomination for best actor in a lead film role.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sally Rooney</span> Irish author

Sally Rooney is an Irish author and screenwriter. She has published three novels: Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018), and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021). The first two were adapted into the television miniseries Normal People (2020) and Conversations with Friends (2022).

<i>Normal People</i> 2018 novel by Sally Rooney

Normal People is a 2018 novel by the Irish author Sally Rooney. Normal People is Rooney's second novel, published after Conversations with Friends (2017). It was first published by Faber & Faber on 30 August 2018. The book became a best-seller in the US, selling almost 64,000 copies in hardcover in its first four months of release. A critically acclaimed and Emmy nominated television adaptation of the same name aired from April 2020 on BBC Three and Hulu. A number of publications ranked it one of the best books of the 2010s.

Normal People is a romantic psychological drama television miniseries produced by Element Pictures for BBC Three and Hulu in association with Screen Ireland. It is based on the 2018 novel by Sally Rooney. The series follows the relationship between Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron, as they navigate adulthood from their final days in secondary school to their undergraduate years in Trinity College. The series was primarily written by Rooney and Alice Birch and directed by Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Mescal</span> Irish actor (born 1996)

Paul Colm Michael Mescal is an Irish actor. Born in Maynooth, he studied acting at The Lir Academy and subsequently performed in plays in Dublin theatres. Mescal rose to fame with his role in the miniseries Normal People (2020), earning a BAFTA TV Award and a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award.

Alice Birch is a British playwright and screenwriter. Birch has written several plays, including Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. for which she was awarded the George Devine Award for Most Promising New Playwright, and Anatomy of a Suicide for which she won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Birch was also the screenwriter for the film Lady Macbeth and has written for such television shows as Succession, Normal People, and Dead Ringers.

Conversations with Friends is an Irish television serial based on the 2017 novel of the same name by the Irish author Sally Rooney. Developed by Element Pictures for BBC Three and Hulu in association with RTÉ, it is the second adaptation by this crew of a Rooney novel after Normal People in 2020. Conversations with Friends was first broadcast on 15 May 2022. The series received mixed reviews with praise for the performance of lead cast and aesthetics.

<i>Beautiful World, Where Are You</i> 2021 novel by Sally Rooney

Beautiful World, Where Are You is a novel by Irish author Sally Rooney. It was released on 7 September 2021. The book was a New York Times and IndieBound bestseller.

Alison Oliver is an Irish actress. She is known for her debut role as Frances in the BBC Three and Hulu miniseries Conversations with Friends (2022), and she was named in Variety's "10 actors to watch" in 2023.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Paula Cocozza (24 May 2017). "'I have an aversion to failure': Sally Rooney feels the buzz of her debut novel". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  2. "Meet the new faces of fiction for 2017". The Observer. 22 January 2017. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  3. Francesca Pymm (29 March 2018). "Conversations with Authors: Sally Rooney talks to The Bookseller". The Bookseller. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  4. "Announcing: the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018 Shortlist" (PDF). Folio Prize. 27 March 2018. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  5. "Bookmark | Book Marks" . Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  6. "Conversations with Friends". Book Marks. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  7. "Conversations with Friends". Bibliosurf (in French). 4 October 2023. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
  8. Alexandra Schwartz (31 July 2017). "A New Kind of Adultery Novel". The New Yorker. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  9. "Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney review – young, gifted and self-destructive". The Guardian. 1 June 2017. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  10. 1 2 Waldman, Katy (3 August 2017). "Tell Me I'm Interesting". Slate. ISSN   1091-2339 . Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  11. "Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends Is Coming to Hulu—Here's What to Know". Harper's Bazaar. Retrieved 22 February 2021.