I hate Frances and I am Frances: the complexity of Sally Rooney's 'Conversations With Friends'

Upon finishing this novel, I closed the book dreading growing older but wishing also to speed through my 20s in the hopes of reaching a place I don't even believe exists, in between the two, where I am neither a complicated young adult nor an aged ghost of myself.

Sally Rooney has a special ability to take conventionally scandalous and extreme things and make them mundane in the most emotional and human way. Extramarital affairs, stints in the psych ward, secret pregnancies, porn addictions, and passing out from the pain of endometriosis. From her debut Beautiful World, Where Are You? (don't worry if you thought Normal People was her first novel) to her latest masterpiece Intermezzo (which I have yet to read) Rooney has become a global sensation with two of her novels adapted into TV series one of which being Conversations With Friends.

If your interest is sparked by secret affairs, stolen kisses, wives vs mistresses, casual sex, sleeping with exes, spineless men, and complicated women Conversations With Friends is definitely a novel you could sink your teeth into. For a novel with such a title, it has no focus on platonic relationships - bar those existing inside romantic ones.

The novel's protagonist, Frances, is difficult to love but her relatability comes with great ease - not a very comforting concept as a reader in total honesty, but she made for a very interesting read. All of the characters in this novel have both redeeming qualities and substantial flaws, which makes none of them particularly likable or worth rooting for, but through the depiction of the effect they have on one another, you find yourself rooting for particular relationships and character developments. For me, that was Frances and Bobby, former lovers, and current best friends. They seem to just get each other and naturally improve each other's lives. Despite, for the majority of the time, it seems like the two younger girls were infiltrating somebody's marriage, I think it becomes clear by the end that it was their own relationship being impaled by the married couple. As a reader, you are lured into the assumption that the novel is made up of an ensemble cast of characters, but eventually, through the way Rooney has Frances discussing and pondering her feelings, it becomes clear that this is a story about her and Bobby, it always had been and no matter what is to happen after the final line, it always will be.

I have never been disappointed by Sally Rooney; her raw and dry portrayal of complicated people and relationships is something I greatly admire and wish to replicate in my own work. I believe this is the kind of writing and the kind of narrative the world needs. Some may argue there is a certain privileged 'vibe' seeping through her novels. I do agree with this to an extent; Rooney does tend to write about white, middle-class individuals who are often not suffering from any external issues, and their biggest problems seem to be lodged between their self-esteem and how this affects their relationships. Occasionally she will stick her toe into the sea of dysfunctional parents, or slide into the realm of medical issues, but mostly her characters are victims only of their internal struggles. So her work won't appeal to everyone, but that is an impossible task anyway. I think the perfect audience for a Sally Rooney novel are people who have been consumed by their inner problems for a lot of their lives and want something to relate to, and somebody to question why they remain so consumed. And people who want to find a quiet, isolated place to escape the constant reminder of the outrage and tragedy of the world and read something easy, but with no cost to intellectual stimulation.

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TV adaptions of Sally Rooney novels

Normal People is available on Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV

Conversations With Friends is available on Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV