Conversations with Friends

Frances and Bobbi, students and former girlfriends, fall into the orbit of an older married couple in Dublin, and the four entangle in ways none of them can quite control. Sally Rooney’s debut is cool, precise, and unnervingly attentive to how people talk and what they withhold. Taylor Swift has praised it warmly, saying she likes the tone Rooney takes and that reading her is like being inside somebody’s mind.