![]() ![]() ![]() The background of Alice’s nervous breakdown and Simon’s Catholicism also bring in sensitive treatments of mental illness and faith. Through their relationships with Felix (a rough-around-the-edges warehouse worker) and Simon (slightly older and involved in politics), Rooney explores the question of whether lasting bonds can be formed despite perceived differences of class and intelligence. Both young women are well aware of their shortcomings and of the irony that, in a time of climate breakdown, on a daily basis their headspace is still mostly devoted to comparatively inconsequential things like work and sexuality. ![]() The themes here are much the same: friendship, nostalgia, sex, communication and the search for meaning.īWWAY is that little bit more existential: through the long-form e-mail correspondence between two friends from college, novelist Alice and literary magazine editor Eileen, we imbibe a lot of philosophizing about history, aesthetics and culture (Eileen: “My theory is that human beings lost the instinct for beauty in 1976, when plastics became the most widespread material in existence”), and musings on the purpose of an individual life against the backdrop of the potential extinction of the species. Conversations with Friends was a surprise hit with me back in 2017 when I read it as part of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award shadow panel the year she won. (3.75) I was one of those rare readers who didn’t think so much of Normal People, so to me this felt like a return to form. ![]()
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