Conversations with Friends is frequently beautiful and steadfastly naturalistic – we see the characters in transit, getting dressed, texting with clear timestamps for the summer of 2019 – but keeps its characters terse, two-dimensional and frustratingly inscrutable. (Rooney co-wrote the first half of Normal People, but has no official role in this series.)Ĭarrying over both Rooney’s reticent style and digital communication is a tall order, and the loss to translation is a palpable absence. Key figures from Normal People – Irish production company Element Pictures, director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Alice Birch – strive for a similar quiet, meditative realism on Conversations, with characters who communicate more frequently, and significantly, through text and email.

It’s a murkier tangle than Normal People, made even more inaccessible by the characters’ psychological opaqueness and general aversion to speaking. The book and series follow a thorny quadrangle of sex and friendship between two best friends/ex-lovers and an older married couple – none of whom, in classic Rooney fashion, seem party to their own motivations.

Conversations with Friends is a harder sell.

Conversations with friends author