Conversations with Friends - Sally Rooney

This book seemed to be all over social media for a while. This can do one of two things to me. It can send me scuttling off in the opposite direction as I flee most manner of potential hype. Or it can set my bookometer into motion so that I can do nothing until I have my grubby, little hands upon the book. You’ve probably realised that with this book the former applied. I did go on to read Normal People not long after it was published.  I enjoyed enough.  But it was the TV adaptation of Conversations with Friends that sent me bookwards.  I enjoyed the screen adaptation immensely. I had also watched Normal People on TV which I didn’t feel was anywhere near as good as the book.So my logic told me that if I enjoyed the “Conversations …” series the book would be even better!  Was it?

For a debut novel ‘Conversations…’ is impressive. It is an erudite, intellectual novel populated by sharp and acerbic characters. The exploration of relationships is piercingly perceptive and the understanding of the characters is so acute you feel they are people you’ve come across at some point in your life. There were times when I couldn’t stand any of them for various reasons -  apathy, judgemental, opinionated, needy but there were also times when all four of them broke my heart. A curious paradox. Or is it? Isn’t that what people in real life do to us all the time? And I think that’s what made the novel seem very real. What I didn’t get, though, especially given that ‘Conversations….’ is the title is why the entire novel lacked any kind of speech marks. I get the rebellious writer thing - wanting to eschew all the constraints of grammar and punctuation. But then go the whole hog. Ditch the capital letters and full stops, do the entire e e cummings thing or have I missed something fundamental? I understand that some people will have the opinion that the omission of speech punctuation forced the reader to attend more closely to what was actually being said. That’s an interesting concept and I guess as readers we are also individual. That wouldn’t apply to me. Maybe that’s paradox because obviously I noticed there weren’t any but I don’t think the inclusion or omission would have any effect on how I processed the writing. 

On paper the synopsis sounds like a regular run-of-the-mill affair novel. Two best friends, once lovers, meet up with a married couple and become friends. One of the best friends has an affair with one of the couple. But the thrust of the book is more about the interrelationships, the dynamics between all of them and how each individual character deals with the situations they’re in. It’s compelling and it’s fascinating as each of the characters cross paths with each other in various ways and their frequent failures to understand where the other is coming from.

So, was the book better than the series? In many ways the series was very faithful to the book there was swathes of dialogue lifted straight from the text. But there was some juxtaposition of events and locations. But overall I think I prefer the book! That’s usually the case.I’ve got mixed feelings about this desire to translate work of fiction to the small, or the large screen. I like that it can bring a new audience to an author and maybe inspire them to seek out the books for themselves. That can only be a good thing.