Sally Rooney brings “torn between two lovers” to a new level. The first person narrator, Frances, who identifies as bisexual, is in love with Bobbi, her female ex-lover and Nick the husband of Melissa. Nick and Melissa are Bobbi’s friends, and Frances is caught in a triangulation relationship with Melissa and Bobbi when she begins having an affair with Nick.
Bobbi and Frances are college students; Melissa and Nick are in their thirties. There are age and economic differences among the four protagonists. There are questions about the sanctity and value of marriage. Discussions about monogamy and other questionable values systems are commonplace when Sally Rooney creates millennial characters. Conversations with Friends is the first of Sally Rooney’s books, and after reading the other two, I decided to go back and read this one in anticipation of the new Hulu adaptation. It is my least favorite of her books because of its rambling conversations and thin plot. However, Rooney appeals to millennials and certainly captures their disenfranchisement, political rants, economic anxiety, and existential dread and self-hate.
I cannot summarize the viewpoints as well as these quotes from the novel:
Bobbi says, “…monogamy was based on a commitment model, which served the needs of men in patrilineal societies by allowing them to pass property to their genetic offspring, traditionally facilitated by sexual entitlement to a wife. Nonmonogamy could be based on an alternative model completely, Bobbi said. Something more like spontaneous consent.” (p. 241). Kindle Edition.
The discussion of love, the human spirit, and mental health intermingle with capitalism.
“if you look at love as something other than an interpersonal phenomenon and try to understand it as a social value system… it’s both antithetical to capitalism, in that it challenges the axiom of selfishness which dictates the whole logic of inequality and yet also it’s subservient and facilitatory i.e. mothers selflessly raising children without any profit motive.” (p. 174). Kindle Edition.
“To love someone under capitalism you have to love everyone. Is that theory or just theology?” (p.286) Kindle Edition
“…depression is a humane response to the conditions of late capitalism.” (p. 119). Kindle Edition.
