Conversations with Friends

👍🏼Pick It: For that familiar, snuggly style that is the phenomenal Sally Rooney
👎🏼Skip It: until you allow three months of Normal People separation and desensitization

I didn't let the back page of Normal People close before putting Conversations With Friends on hold.

And while it was still stuffed with the same Rooney-reminiscent prose, it didn't carry the same emotional pull.

Perhaps I did her a disservice by reading the two novels back to back. Or perhaps what made Normal People the stronger of the two was its multiple POVs. Much of what made Normal People so searing was knowing where both parties stood and their sheer unwillingness to be vulnerable.

On the other hand, Conversations is a one-woman vulnerability spillage and inner rummaging. And when that sole voice is from 21-year old Francis, placing yourself on her carousel of feelings begins to feel like a selfish indulgence rather than possible and resolvable development.

And still, I'd read this book again and again, because Rooney makes it impossible to not feel and feel tied to the what makes us our most-devastatingly human selves.