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A Publishers Weekly Pick of the WeekOne of Elle.com's Best Books of 2017
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Rooney has the gift of imbuing everyday life with a sense of high stakes…a novel of delicious frictions.
— Christian Lorentzen, New York Magazine“The self-deceptions of a new generation are at the core of Sally Rooney’s debut, Conversations With Friends (Hogarth), which captures something wonderfully odd-cornered and real in the story of an Irish millennial…
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[A] bracing, miraculous debut.
— The Millions“Sally Rooney’s debut novel is a remarkably charming exploration of that very uncharming subject: the human ego…Conversations With Friends sparkles with controlled rhetoric. But it ends up emphasizing the truths exploding in the silences.
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In this searing, insightful debut, Rooney offers an unapologetic perspective on the vagaries of relationships… a treatise on married life, the impact of infidelity, the ramifications of one’s actions, and how the person one chooses to be with can impact one’s individuality. Throughout, Rooney’s descriptive eye lends beauty and veracity to this complex and vivid story.
— Publishers Weekly (starred)
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Readers who enjoyed Belinda McKeon's Tender and Caitriona Lally's Eggshells will enjoy this exceptional debut.
— Library Journal (starred)
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"A smart, sexy, realistic portrayal of a woman finding herself.
— Booklist (starred)
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An astonishing assured debut.
— The Bookseller
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"The book of the summer...the wider issues underscoring her book – including race, sex and gender – which in her careful treatment, emerge far more complex and often funnier, than we could have ever imagined.
— Refinery29
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A very funny, very humanly messy tale of sexual and artistic self-discovery in which every page reveals shrewd emotional insight. Caught between laser-eyed irony and heart-melting sincerity, the book is a masterclass in narrative tone that left me desperate to read whatever Rooney writes next... An addictive, funny and truthful first novel about love and literature.
— Metro
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A contemporary love story so powerful, graceful and honest it left me reeling. [Conversations with Friends] is, by turns, astonishing, heart-rending and perfect; there's not a word out of place.
— Luke Kennard, author of The Transition
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Sally Rooney is a writer going all the way to the top. Conversations with Friends features the 21st century, Irish descendents of Salinger's guileless wiseasses brought to life in prose as taut and coolly poised as early Bret Easton Ellis.
— Colin Barrett, author of Young Skins
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There's not a beat out of place in Sally Rooney’s astonishingly poised writing. Conversations with Friends is the most sophisticated and perceptive novel I've read about relationships in the 2010s.
— Gavin Corbett, author of This Is The Way and Green Glowing Skull
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Written with such precision and perceptiveness, full of arid humour and reckless despair, a novel of spine-tingling salience.
— Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither and winner of the 2015 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
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[Sally] Rooney has managed to take something old, the romance novel, and make it new: Frances is a bisexual communist student, allergic to expressing emotion, and her love affair is with a married man, and yet the book makes no attempt to make a moral stand on fidelity or punish its characters for their passions. The effect is, frankly, riveting, and creates a peculiar sensation of danger…An addictive read.
— Rufi Thorpe, author of The Girls From Corona del Mar and Dear Fang, With Love
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Sally Rooney's writing is cool, wry and smooth, and gives the reader a sense of being in the lucky position of overhearing not only what fascinating strangers are talking about, but also what they're thinking. I was riveted til the last page.
— Emily Gould, author of Friendship
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Fascinating, ferocious and shrewd. Sally Rooney has the sharpest eye for all of the most delicate cruelties of human interaction.
— Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies (winner of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction)
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[Sally] Rooney captures the mood and voice of contemporary women and their interpersonal connections and concerns without being remotely predictable…A clever and current book about a complicated woman and her romantic relationships.
— Kirkus
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A writer of rare confidence, with a lucid, exacting style… [O]ne wonderful aspect of Rooney’s consistently wonderful novel is the fierce clarity with which she examines the self-delusion that so often festers alongside presumed self-knowledge… But Rooney’s natural power is as a psychological portraitist. She is acute and sophisticated about the workings of innocence; the protagonist of this novel about growing up has no idea just how much of it she has left to do.
— The New Yorker
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"A novelist to watch: An addictive debut, with nods to Tender is the Night, heralds a bright new talent.
— Sunday Times