An Electrifying Exploration of Youth, Desire, and the Unraveling of Certainty

Sharp, darkly witty, and deeply intelligent, Conversations with Friends follows 21-year-old Frances—a cool-headed, fiercely observant college student and aspiring writer—who prides herself on keeping emotions at arm’s length. With her magnetic best friend and former lover Bobbi by her side, she navigates Dublin’s literary scene, performing spoken-word poetry and dissecting the world with razor-sharp intellect.

But when they meet Melissa, an alluring, sophisticated journalist, and her handsome yet detached husband, Nick, the boundaries of Frances’s carefully controlled life begin to blur. What starts as a playful flirtation turns into an unexpected entanglement, one that shakes Frances’s convictions about power, love, and the vulnerability of the body.

As her relationships grow more complicated— with Nick, with her estranged and troubled father, and even with Bobbi—Frances is forced to confront a truth she has long avoided: that life, for all its intellectual certainties, is ultimately lived moment to moment.

"You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.”

With Sally Rooney’s signature precision and psychological depth, Conversations with Friends is a dazzling, provocative debut—alive with the pleasures, heartbreaks, and quiet devastations of youth.