If you liked
Books like Conversations with Friends
by Sally Rooney
Conversations with Friends is the Sally Rooney debut that made everyone argue about her: a student, her ex-girlfriend, and an affair with an older married man, all rendered in that flat, email-clean prose that hides how much is going on underneath. If you want more sharp, talky fiction about young people and messy intimacy, read on.
The shortlist
What to read next
Normal Peopleby Sally Rooney
“Normal People by Sally Rooney 2018 review. Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small Sligo town, attend Trinity College Dublin together, and orbit each other across four years of intermittent intimacy. The literary-fiction novel that defined the Rooney moment.”
Beautiful World, Where Are Youby Sally Rooney
“Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney 2021 review. A famous Irish novelist and her Dublin best friend exchange philosophical emails. Rooney's third novel and the structural bridge between Normal People and Intermezzo.”
Intermezzoby Sally Rooney
“Intermezzo by Sally Rooney 2024 review. Two Dublin brothers - a lawyer and a chess player - navigate grief and romance after their father's death. Rooney's fourth novel and her structurally most ambitious yet.”
My Brilliant Friendby Elena Ferrante
“My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante 2012 review. Two girls grow up in a poor neighborhood of 1950s Naples. The first Neapolitan Novel and one of the canonical contemporary European literary novels.”
A Little Lifeby Hanya Yanagihara
“A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 2015 review. Four college friends in New York, slowly narrowing onto Jude St. Francis and what childhood trauma does to the rest of an adult life. Man Booker Prize shortlist and the most-discussed contemporary American doorstop.”
Olive Kitteridgeby Elizabeth Strout
“Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout 2008 review. A retired Maine math teacher across thirteen interlinked stories. Pulitzer Prize 2009 and canonical contemporary American interconnected-novels project.”
FAQ
Common questions about Conversations with Friends read-alikes
- Which Rooney should I read next?
- Normal People, without hesitation. It is the tighter, more devastating version of what Conversations with Friends is doing, an on-again-off-again love story that became the show everyone watched. Beautiful World, Where Are You and Intermezzo round out her catalog if you want all of it.
- What is the closest match outside Rooney?
- My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. It shares the intense, ambivalent female friendship at the center and the sense that the relationships are the real plot. Ferrante is warmer and more sweeping, but Rooney clearly read her.
- I want the emotional depth pushed to the extreme.
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara follows a group of friends from college into adulthood and takes the pain much further than Rooney does. Brace yourself, but if you read Conversations for the friendships, it is the deep end of that pool.
- I want quiet, precise fiction about ordinary lives.
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout builds a whole life out of small, exact moments and won the Pulitzer doing it. It is older and less online than Rooney, but it shares the belief that nothing dramatic needs to happen for a book to land hard.
The original