Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends is a fluent and impressive first novel. Still only twenty-six years old, Rooney says she wrote the book in a “huge rush”, and this has translated to the page, where urgency is crucial; the quartet of bourgeois artists that the book centres on are so introspective that, at times, it requires this sense of propulsion to stick with them. Frances, a twenty-one-year-old spoken-word poet, performs with her confident and beautiful ex-girlfriend Bobbi. Their work comes to the attention of Melissa, who hopes to write a profile on the pair. She also introduces them to her actor husband Nick.