Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

We take the selection of books to choose from quite seriously and this was no exception. Sophie Law (BBC Radio Oxford) said she was enjoying reading it, so we checked the reviews: Sunday Times "an addictive debut ... A bright new talent", Observer: "It's a rare that a novel elicits such unmitigated awe from just about everyone you know, whether male, female, millennial or middle-aged". And then we checked the book store scores: Amazon 4.6 out of 5; Waterstones a whopping 5 out of 5.

This looked to be a great choice and a promising read.

So on a beautiful summers evening when 10 book group friends settled down in the pub garden, it felt a little awkward being one of the (at best) 0.4's. That is until we started the conversation!

The conversation started with round table first thoughts:

1. "Rubbish"
2. "I couldn't be interested in these people"
3. "Shallow - I couldn't engage with the characters"
4. "Not even the sex scenes were engaging!"
5. "Soul-less"
6. "Things got introduced then fizzled out"
7. "I couldn't care about the characters - nothing made me bother about them"
8. "I think the author may be self-obsessed'"
9. "NO SPEECHMARKS - how pretentious" 
10. "Phew - not just me then!"

That's about the long and short of it. Our entire book group, ranging from the highly intellectual to the (well) me, was not impressed. We were less than impressed. We were disappointed. We searched hard to try to see things from the reviewers points of view.

"She's prize winning" - "well she got a Booker Prize nomination"#  

"Marian Keyes review is: "Fecken Brilliant" - "that's it?" - "she is Irish" (and then we got onto the subject of Marian Keyes) - "we read one of hers, we didn't like it much either" *

*STOP PRESS: the author of that one was Tracy Chevalier - let's put a Marian Keyes book on our Autumn choice! I expect it will F***ing Brilliant (well I am Kentish!). 

"It's easy to read - quickly" "At least it wasn't a difficult to read bad book"

I quite liked the lack of speech marks, it was freer flowing, a stream of consciousness. (This is a comment and it's from our 'reader most positive' who scores the book 5.....out of 10.) 

"My Grandmother was from Ballina" - BINGO! let's stop right here. 

FOOTNOTE: We are not alone. Adam Mars-Jones review for The London Review of Books: "The blandness of Sally Rooney’s novels, last year’s Conversations with Friends and her new one, Normal People, begins and ends with those oddly non-committal titles." Sign-up to the website is required to continue reading the review - enough now I thought, and clicked X!

Oh and Goodreads 3954 reviewers average score is 3.8 of of 5.

# The Awards Facts:

British Book Award SUBMITTED 2018

Desmond Elliott Prize LONGLIST 2018

Folio Fiction/Poetry Awards SHORTLIST 2018

Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award SHORTLIST 2018

Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2017

The Dylan Thomas Prize SHORTLIST 2018

We will meet at 8pm on Thursday 26th September in The Hundred of Ashendon to discuss Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner and then choose our next book. Looking forward to more enjoyable conversations with friends.