But it’s a trickier tale to translate to TV. Conversations With Friends is arguably the better book than Normal People. But, with a new BBC adaptation, has Sally Rooney TV lightning struck twice? Yes and no. Laying out the hopes, fears and affairs of Generation Anxiety, the book is a masterpiece. Two postgraduate friends and former lovers – bolshy, precocious Bobbi and shy, plain Frances – become embroiled with an older, married middle-class couple, Nick and Melissa. Like Normal People, Conversation With Friends explores what happens when love collides with shy ambition. The following year she published Normal People (one million copies sold to date) and then came the BBC adaptation: a genuine phenomenon that made global superstars of its sizzling hot lead actors, Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, and provided the most effective balm for the first lockdown. When Sally Rooney published her debut novel, Conversations With Friends, in 2017 it established her as Jane Austen for Millennials – Rooney’s concise dialogue slicing straight through the emotional complexity of courtship and identity.
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