Conversations with friends, by Sally Rooney

And sort of friends, and lovers, and ex-lovers, and soon-to-be-lovers, and difficult parents.  Obviously this is a very talky book.  Twenty-one year old Frances and Bobbi, college students in Dublin, were lovers for years beginning in high school.  Now they have moved beyond this, but still perform poetry in various venues.  After one such spoken word event, a well-known photographer approaches them and asks if she can do an article about them.   They are thrilled by her attention, but their developing relationship with the 38-year-old Melissa and her somewhat younger actor husband, Nick, will have lasting effects on all of them.  Bobbi is attracted to the glamorous Melissa, Frances to the handsome Nick.  Bobbi’s wealthy parents are going through an acrimonious divorce, while Frances depends on a small monthly allowance from her unreliable alcoholic father.  Things get messy.  This debut novel (the  author is 27) provides no easy answers to the difficulty of growing up in the post-millennial world.  307 pp.