Conversations with Friends

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. What is your personal definition of a “complicated” relationship? Take turns discussing what boundaries you would normally expect from a relationship, whether with friends or with lovers. How might you relate these ideas to the characters’ choices as they navigate their own boundaries throughout the novel?

2. Is it ever possible to live fully in accordance with the ideologies to which you subscribe? How do you deal with lapses in praxis? Does this dynamic between theory and praxis affect your evaluation of Frances’s personal choices and ideologies?

3. Do you have relationships that remind you of the dynamic between Frances and Bobbi? Consider their dynamic as it manifests in all of their interactions with one another, not just their romantic history.

4. How does the novel affirm the challenges that come with navigating gender? What do you do in your own life to make sense of these issues?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. The novel focuses on the issue of power dynamics in personal relationships. Does the novel portray Frances and Nick’s affair as a radical interpretation of personal agency, or does it subtly critique the dynamics that they have with one another and with their respective (ex-)partners, Bobbi and Melissa?

2. How does the novel frame Frances’s discovery that she has endometriosis? Discuss this subplot in the context of the novel’s thesis on femininity. How does this issue relate this to the challenges that the novel’s other female characters face?

3. Rooney self-identifies as a Marxist writer, an alignment that she manifests through different questions of class dynamics in novels like Beautiful World, Where Are You and Intermezzo. How do Rooney’s Marxist politics manifest in this novel?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. What role does Melissa play in the narrative? Feel free to discuss differing interpretations of her role. Does she antagonize Frances and Nick, or does she serve as the novel’s moral compass by reminding them of the nature of their relationship?

2. Discuss Rooney’s choice to craft the four major characters of the novel as artists. How does their work in different fields of art drive their ability (or their failure) to connect with one another?

3. Compare Frances’s relationship with her father to her relationship with Nick. How do the failures and challenges of engaging with her father affect her decision to engage an older man in a romantic relationship?

4. Discuss the shifts in the power dynamic between Frances and Bobbi. How do their actions towards Nick and Melissa affect this power dynamic? Could their respective crushes be interpreted as attempts to upset their balance with one another?