“Conversations with Friends” Lacks Conversation of Any Sort

When I originally started this blog, I had no intention of writing full-length reviews — in fact, in all of my journalism career, I’m not sure I ever wrote more than one or two reviews — but my recent reads and TV show binges deserve some talking about. After jumping on the “Normal People” bandwagon a few weeks ago, I was beyond excited to hear that another one of Sally Rooney’s books, Conversations with Friends, was being adapted onto the screen. In fact, I was so excited that I went to my local bookstore to pick up a copy of the novel, only to end up leaving instead with the third of the authors novels, Beautiful World, Where Are You but more about that later.

I’m not proud to admit it, but I did not read the Conversations with Friends novel before starting the show. When I went to the bookstore to buy it, I read the back of the cover and didn’t find myself compelled to the storyline…which should have been my first indicator that I wasn’t going to enjoy TV adaption either, but alas, I gave it a watch anyway.

* Spoiler Warning *

For those of you that aren’t familiar with the plot, the novel follows four friends through a series of complicated relationships. Bobbi (Sasha Lane) and Frances (Alison Oliver) are exes that live together and perform “spoken-word poetry,” (which I remember to be the exact line on the back cover of the novel that made me re-evaluate my decision to purchase the novel.) Their relationship is incredibly complicated as Bobbi is out-spoken, vibrant, and adamantly anti-heteronormative relationships. Frances on the other hand is the anti-thesis of “outspoken” to the point where there were times throughout the show where her silence was physically painful as a viewer. During one of their poetry performances the two meet Melissa (Jemima Kirke), a well-known author who takes a keen interest in the pair and invites them over to her beautiful and massive home, where they meet her also beautiful husband, Nick (Joe Alwyn). While Bobbi takes a liking to Melissa, Nick and Frances manage to hit it off despite not saying more than ten words collectively to one another.

Not long after their introduction, Frances and Nick begin to start seeing each other in secret, engaging in a quiet affair behind the backs of both Melissa and Bobbi. This puts an increasing amount of tension on the pair when Melissa invites Bobbi and Frances to her and Nick’s vacation home in Croatia for a wonderful summer trip. I will say, that the episodes where they are in Croatia where the most enjoyable of the series. While all of Rooney’s books take place in Ireland, the setting of Conversations is particularly gloomy, which allows the vacation episodes to be a much needed reprieve from the normal dreariness of the show. However, during one of their last nights of the trip, Frances and Nick get busted in bed together by Bobbi.

One might think that this is where that “conversation” with a friend might happen, where Bobbi looks at her ex-girfriend, “best friend,” and roommate and says, “Hey, maybe you should stop sleeping with our mutual friends’ husband.” However, no such conversation happens. Instead, Bobbi allows the affair to continue, even under her own roof, for a series of months.

The entire show goes on this way. Frances and Nick’s relationship advances despite the fact that neither of them has the capacity or courage to speak more than a few words at a time to one another at all. Bobbi allows it to happen, whilst still being dear friends with Melissa. And that makes up roughly ten episodes of the show.

Around episode ten, Nick decides he wants to tell his wife about his affair, but also that he doesn’t want to leave her because he still loves her. He claims to love Frances, who loves him back. I forgot to mention in my earlier introduction to the plot that Frances is a mere 21 years old, while Nick is projected to be in his early to mid-thirties. Again, this is where you think that we might see a grand display of communication between two of the main characters, but yet again, we don’t.

We actually don’t see the conversation between Nick and Melissa at all, although we see the subsequent conversations between Frances and Melissa, where Melissa tells Frances in an oddly cool manner for someone who has just found out her husband is cheating on her, that she isn’t going to force Nick to stop seeing her. Instead, she suggests that they all — Bobbi included — have a nice dinner together. Maybe my personal beliefs are “old fashioned,” however, I would rather die than attend a dinner with my cheating husband, his mistress, and her ex-girlfriend.

During this chaotic but ultimately anti-climatic plot line, it’s also revealed that Frances submitted a short story for publication in which she describes Bobbi and their breakup in an unflattering and ultimately cruel way — and she got paid a fair bit of money for it. Frances decides against telling Bobbi about the story and its publication, but Melissa believes that Bobbi has a right to know and shares it with her behind Frances’ back. Rightfully so, Bobbi is furious that Frances would say such vengeful things about her, and moves out of their shared apartment. This sends Frances, who was already circling the drain, into a full-on tailspin. She breaks things off with Nick due to the fact that he doesn’t want to divorce his wife for her, and continues spiraling even more until she writes an apology letter to Bobbi where she explains that she’s actually still in love with her. Surprised? As was I considering the fact that besides some excessively long eye-contact and one secret kiss, Bobbi and Frances don’t particularly seem to enjoy the company of one another.

In the final episode of the show, Bobbi and Frances are dating again and it’s implied that things are back to normal between Melissa and Nick, until Nick accidentally calls Frances by mistake one fated day in December. During this phone call Nick reveals to Frances that, “I have this impulse to be available to you all the time.” The show cuts off with Frances asking him to come pick her up and him crying tears of joy and driving to pick her up.

Now, there is a lot to unpack here so I will go ahead and do some of it for you. Firstly, I have never experienced a more boring and bland character in my life than Frances. There’s a monologue after Bobbi finds out that Frances published a story about her where Bobbi says something along the lines of, “the world doesn’t revolve around you, Frances, and you’re fu— boring” (I majorly paraphrased that). Despite disliking Bobbi as well, this was one time where I actually valued her brutal honesty and 100% agreed with her. Secondly, and more importantly, you will not find me supporting a couple that is born out of infidelity. I’m theorizing here, that this show was trying to make a commentary on complicated relationships and maybe even attempt to provide some normalization for polyamory (I have to think that they were trying for something more than just a show about a bunch of people cheating on one another), but using cheating is not a way to do that. I couldn’t find myself enjoying the very minimal chemistry that Nick and Frances had because Nick was willingly cheating on his wife, and Frances was knowingly getting in between two married people. Ultimately, I found all the characters entirely insufferable. It’s one thing to have quiet, shy, and introspective characters, but to have characters that just make soft eyes at each other for minutes at a time and call it a day? I’m not sold. That being said, I have read that the characters are better in the book and were not well-adapted to the screen, so this is not a judgement of Ms. Rooney.

Even if I could get over the awful characters and the even worse cheating plot, I didn’t find the acting to be good at all.

The only part of the story that I can actually say I slightly enjoyed was the fact that, despite two of the four main characters being “writers,” neither of them spend any time writing at all, whatsoever. There were multiple scenes where they discuss how their writing is coming along which is answered to the tone of “It’s not,” staking it’s claim as the only piece of relatability in the entire show.

After concluding the show, I wonder if I might have had a different opinion had I read the book first. However, after having such a terrible experience watching the show, I think I’m going to be removing Conversations with Friend off my “to be read” list for the time being.