It’s been years since the "Rooney Mania" peak, but people are still fighting about Frances and Nick. Honestly, it’s hilarious. You go on Reddit or TikTok and the discourse is as heated as it was in 2017. Sally Rooney Conversations with Friends didn't just launch a career; it basically invented a new genre of "sad millennial" fiction that everyone else has been trying to copy ever since.
Some people find it pretentious. Others think it’s the most honest depiction of being twenty-something and totally lost.
The book is about Frances, a coolly detached student in Dublin, her best friend (and ex-lover) Bobbi, and the married couple they get entangled with, Nick and Melissa. It sounds like a standard affair trope. It isn’t. Rooney writes about power dynamics, money, and Marxism in a way that makes a simple dinner party feel like a high-stakes heist.
The Weird Logic of Frances and Nick
Frances is a difficult protagonist. She’s observant but also kind of a nightmare to her own self. When you’re reading Sally Rooney Conversations with Friends, you realize she uses her intellect as a literal shield. She thinks that if she can analyze a situation perfectly, it can’t hurt her.
She’s wrong.
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Then there’s Nick. He’s an actor, he’s older, and he’s clinically depressed. Their affair isn't some glamorous, swept-away romance. It’s awkward. It’s full of emails and instant messages that feel painfully real. Most books make affairs look like a movie montage. Rooney makes it look like two people staring at a blinking cursor on a laptop screen, wondering if they should hit "send."
The power shifts constantly. At first, you think Nick has the power because he’s the adult with the house and the wife. But then you see how much he relies on Frances for emotional validation.
Why the No-Quotation-Marks Thing Actually Works
If you’ve picked up the book, you noticed the lack of punctuation. No "he said" or "she said" with little curly marks. A lot of readers hate this. They think it’s a gimmick.
But here’s the thing: in the world of Sally Rooney Conversations with Friends, the internal thoughts and the spoken words bleed together. It creates this claustrophobic feeling. You’re trapped inside Frances’s head. When she’s talking to Bobbi, you sometimes can’t tell if she’s thinking something or saying it out loud. That’s exactly how social anxiety feels. It’s brilliant, even if it makes you want to squint at the page for the first twenty pages until your brain adjusts.
The TV Adaptation vs. The Book
We have to talk about the Hulu/BBC show. It came out after the massive success of Normal People, and let’s be real—it didn't land the same way.
Normal People was easy to love because the chemistry was explosive. Conversations with Friends is colder. Joe Alwyn played Nick with a sort of muted, lethargic energy that polarized fans. Some felt he nailed the "depressed actor" vibe, while others found him about as exciting as unflavored oatmeal.
Alison Oliver was incredible as Frances, though. She captured that specific Irish student look—the oversized coats, the nervous habit of touching her neck, the silence that feels like a weapon.
The show struggled because so much of the book happens in the subtext. In a novel, Rooney can spend three pages explaining the specific way Frances feels about her father’s alcoholism or her own chronic pain (she has endometriosis, which is a huge, often overlooked part of the plot). On screen, you just see a girl looking sad in a kitchen. It’s harder to translate that internal rot to a visual medium.
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The Endometriosis Factor
One thing most people overlook when discussing Sally Rooney Conversations with Friends is the physical pain. Frances is literally falling apart. The scenes where she’s dealing with her reproductive health are some of the most visceral in modern fiction.
It’s not just a "love story." It’s a story about inhabiting a body that feels like a traitor. Her physical vulnerability is what finally breaks through her intellectual pretension. You can't "Marxist theory" your way out of a localized hemorrhage. This is where Rooney earns her stripes as a realist. She doesn't let her characters stay in the clouds; she drags them back down to the blood and the dirt.
Is It Just "Wealthy People Problems"?
A common critique is that these characters are insufferable. They go to villas in France. They drink wine and talk about art.
True.
But Rooney is a self-proclaimed Marxist. She knows they’re insufferable. The book is constantly poking at the fact that Frances has no money while Bobbi comes from wealth. There’s a scene where Frances is literally starving because she’s run out of cash, and she’s too proud to tell anyone. She’s surrounded by "intellectuals" who talk about the working class but don’t notice their friend hasn't eaten a proper meal in days.
That tension is the engine of the book. It’s not a celebration of the elite; it’s an autopsy of how class defines intimacy.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Ending
People want a "happily ever after" or a "clean break." You don't get that here.
The ending of Sally Rooney Conversations with Friends is famously ambiguous. It suggests a cycle. It suggests that despite all the growth, all the pain, and all the therapy-speak, we often end up exactly where we started because the pull of another person is too strong.
It’s not "toxic" in the way TikTok uses the word. It’s just human. We make bad choices because we’re lonely.
How to Actually "Get" Sally Rooney
If you’re struggling to enjoy the book or the show, stop looking for a plot. Nothing "happens" in the traditional sense. It’s a character study.
- Read the emails. Don't skim the long blocks of text where Frances and Nick message each other. That’s where the real character development lives.
- Watch the body language. If you’re watching the series, pay attention to the space between the characters. The show is all about what isn't being said.
- Forget the "likability" rule. You don't have to like Frances. You just have to recognize her.
The best way to engage with the world of Sally Rooney Conversations with Friends is to accept that communication is usually a failure. We try to talk, we miss each other, and we keep trying anyway.
To dig deeper into the themes of modern alienation, compare this work to Rooney’s later novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You. You’ll see a clear evolution from the raw, jagged edges of Conversations to a more philosophical, though equally frustrated, outlook on life. If you’re a writer, study her dialogue. Notice how she uses "I don't know" to end sentences—it’s a masterclass in how people actually speak when they’re terrified of being judged.
Check out the original 2017 reviews in The Guardian or The New Yorker to see how the cultural context has shifted since the book first dropped. It’s a fascinating time capsule of a pre-pandemic world that felt just as fractured as our own.