Conversations with Friends
- 321
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
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About the book
Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment. Written with gem-like precision and probing intelligence, Conversations With Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth."
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.2 across 594 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 80% of the weight and the score stays at 7.3 — the Romance average of 7.7 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 6 | 1% |
| Hardcover | 7.2 | 588 | 99% |
Reader voices
The most-liked reviews on Hardcover (credited to their authors).
“There are four characters: Bobbi and Frances, along with the married couple Nick and Melissa. The book is written in an interesting way, particularly in depicting the complex relationships among these four individuals. While I found it enjoyable to read, I didn't particularly like the…”
“I felt like this was an honest representation of these characters and situations, written with a clarity and almost sparseness that honestly called to mind the way Hemingway would use the space between his language to let the reader better imagine. By simply pointing out…”
Frequently asked
How long is Conversations with Friends?
It has 321 pages — shorter than 87% of the ranked books in Romance.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Romance — with scores between 7.2 and 7.3, closest to this book.
