#for everyone who asked
honestly,convos w friends does contain a lot of elements i typically enjoy in narratives (autistic woman narrator, complicated homoerotic female best friendship, absolutely horrible pathetic man, discussions of class framed through generational divides, dry humor, generally heinous people) so i get why my best friend wanted me to read it for those reasons, but i’m almost 80% of the way through the novel and i still find it hopelessly dull. even the most appealing narrative components will fall apart if not scaffolded by a cohesive whole.
okay, I do think the final act of the novel does weave together a lot of the aforementioned components in an elegant and compelling way, and I was especially impressed by the authenticity of frances’s shame surrounding her endometriosis. I think the way she kept nearly reaching a mystical apotheosis before getting too into her own head and forgetting her revelation(s) entirely was really well done, and the overwhelming catholicism (of the dogma of reaching enlightenment through pain) actually really worked in the book’s favor.
the way her overwhelming love for bobbi is also revealed throughout the novel is fascinating, because she otherwise spends so much time thinking about an irrelevant and terrible man to whom she has surrendered herself entirely. she is an incredibly messy and quite pathetic person, but a lot of her struggles with vulnerability and shame do feel authentic and sympathetic.
my biggest issue with this book overall is that i find the prose dull as hell, and I wish rooney had taken more stylistic risks to keep me as a reader engaged aesthetically as well as thematically. of course not every novel is for everyone, but as aforementioned, I did find a lot of its components interesting, especially where it concerned issues of chronic illness, class, and spirituality. also, I’m literally always a sucker for messy homoerotic female best friendships, and will never tire of seeing that expressed in fiction. overall, I’d say this novel had good ideas communicated through mediocre prose.
