Lackluster Conversations With Lovers

When a 21-year-old woman falls for a much older, successful married actor, one might expect compelling chemistry. In Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends, however, both the chemistry and dialogue fall short. The novel highlights how we often accept mediocrity and complacency in relationships, mistaking them for poor communication. After a month of reading Rooney’s 2017 debut and grappling with its lack of quotation marks, I finished the book. Although I believe 'Lackluster Conversations with Lovers' might be a more fitting title, the novel prompted me to reflect on these relationship dynamics.

Conversations With Friends is narrated by Frances, a 21-year-old college student passionate about poetry. Over 307 pages, we witness her lose both her passion and sense of self as she becomes involved with a married man in his thirties. Rooney quickly establishes Frances’s codependent relationship with her best friend, former lover, and poetry partner, Bobbi, which anchors the novel’s emotional themes. Readers observe Frances undermining her new relationships in pursuit of security, often through subtle manipulation.

The recurring question for me was why someone would deliberately withhold information to manipulate, then claim victimhood when confronted about poor communication. As a fan of the Normal People series, I appreciate Rooney’s realistic portrayal of complex themes such as mental health, class, politics, education, and modern relationships. Her vulnerable writing style encourages self-reflection and nuance. Although I found Frances increasingly difficult to empathize with, her lack of accountability was, in some ways, compelling. Characters, like people, are flawed, and while we accept this in fiction, it is often more difficult to reconcile in real life.

There is a quote from Frank O’Hara before the title page of the novel that reads, “In times of crisis, we must decide again and again whom we love.” Frances, in this novel, decides over and over again that she loves Bobbi, just not enough to ever be truly candid with her about her feelings. Instead, she settles for the imminent attention from Nick, the 30-year-old. Though it is never explicitly stated in the book, part of me feels like Frances’s attraction to Nick only blossomed because she envied the connection between Bobbi and Melissa. Participating in mental gymnastics in order to feel superior to her peers, Frances reveals to the reader by the end of the book that she is, in fact, not that smart. Loneliness is one hell of a drug, but what’s worse than an addiction to a state of melancholia is the addiction to equating attention with adoration. Nick gave Frances plenty of attention, on his own terms, but if you were to ask me if I truly believed there was love between the two, I’d say no. How can there be love between two people who cannot speak freely with one another? Sharing a history with someone does not inherently mean the two of you shared love; in fact, one could argue that a long history shared with no change or growth is just time passed.

Deciding over and over again to love someone who chooses not to love you back is a common occurrence in life and often leads to more loneliness than never choosing to love at all. Sally Rooney is a master of the mind in the sense that her work is going to force you to think. Think about yourself and your own relationships, specifically the ways in which we as people accept complacency in our lives to afford ourselves a bit of comfort. Conversations With Friends may not be made up of a lot of conversations with depth, but I think that goes to show the level of care we choose to put into relationships with others and with ourselves. While Frances struggled to communicate with the people closest to her, she was able to speak freely in her poetry and prose. Bobbi, on the other hand, had no problem at all saying how she felt at any time, hence why I found these characters to be fantastic foils of one another. We tend to attract traits we lack in other people; perhaps that’s why Nick was so drawn to Frances, who admired his passive personality, whereas Melissa, his wife, mocked it. Melissa, on the other hand, attracted Bobbi for her spontaneity and frankness. These four characters and their complex relationships with one another are a fascinating study on the different sides of ourselves we choose to share with others.

Comfort often breeds complacency, and we live in a time where people are addicted to their own comfort, beyond just relationships and communication. Sometimes we have to do the hard thing, say the quiet part out loud, and Sally Rooney proved just that without saying too much at all, which in turn said everything. Conversations With Friends may be a frustrating read, but it highlights what happens when we accept and engage in mediocre attempts to forge connections. In order to be a decent friend, partner, or lover, when deciding whom we love, we mustn’t forget to decide to love ourselves, too. Relationships are only as complicated as we allow them to be. Communication is not just about candor, but rather about establishing and expressing one’s true self. When conversations with friends fail to dive deeper than the surface, how can you expect to ever feel truly heard?

Till next time, stay flirty, stay thirsty, and speak up not only for the sake of yourself but for the sake of others.

See you soon,

Paige B.