Crossed wire of love and sex
Book review
A novel note that instant messaging and SMS often can’t help eternal question.
A novel note that instant messaging and SMS often can’t help eternal question.
Photo courtesy of: Shutterstock
No matter how useful instant messaging and SMS chains may be, are we constantly destined for confusion and misunderstandings about relationships and sex?
Irish writer Sally Rooney’s 2017 debut novel “Conversations with Friends” is now being adapted to small screens by the BBC and Hulu, wondering how sensitive the words, or lack of words, are. ..
The novel explores the relationship between two best friends and ex-girlfriends, college students Francis and Bobby, and a 30-year-old couple, Nick and Melissa, who appear to need an outside drama for their relationship to work. increase.
The plot causes extramarital affairs and provides a lot of explosive stories, the main power of which is to explore the subtleties of human communication: text, phone calls, conversations, replied emails and replies. Emails that haven’t been done, outbursts of anger, misunderstandings, misunderstandings.
Looney wisely adds to the perpetual problem of confusion that this problem is further complicated by instant communication. This book focuses on the impersonal nature of electronic messaging. This can be rejected as if it had never actually been sent, but it records the conversation permanently, for better or for worse.
Francis focuses on the truth captured in the Latin expressions “verba volant, scripta manent” or “words fly, writings remain”. Francis states, “Textual evidence of her past love for me will survive her actual love as needed.”
Ambiguity seems to permeate all communication in this novel, and there are subtle manipulations that can occur even in honest friendships.
“I knew she was strategic, and I didn’t because she wanted me to ask,” Francis commented on the exchange with her friend.
Characters are skillfully multidimensional. Very handsome actors suffer from low self-esteem and depression. Published writers feel the need to compete with the 21-year-old. And talented young performers and master debaters feel too incompetent for a meaningful profession.
Still, I always feel like I’m missing one piece of information that completely reveals the character. It feels like I need another honest conversation.
Therefore, the narration provided by Francis, including its seemingly inconsistent, is very self-aware, which only enhances the message of the novel. She is a self-proclaimed communist and admits that she is slowly blending into the extravagant life of Nick and Melissa. “Of course, I secretly liked all the expensive utensils they had in the kitchen.”
When she speaks, we learn that Francis is cursed by an alcoholic dad, limited funding, and physical illness. She is almost painfully self-critical and self-critical, and she continues to return to what is almost physically and mentally harmful as a punishment.
Indeed, even the inside of our protagonist cannot escape the problem of communication-in this case, between her intellect and emotions. But I hope it may mean that Francis is growing a little more.
A deeply psychological yet thrilling novel, it is a meditation on friendship, relationships and their vulnerabilities, conversations and misunderstandings.
It’s easy to see why “conversations with friends” were so immediate that Rooney gained fame with the follow-up “ordinary people” who were so successful in both books and series.
Closing a “conversation with a friend” is impossible to be unaffected. As the narrator says, “What’s done is not the same as what has never happened.”
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