![]() This is regardless of the gender of the people involved, of their sexual orientations. Sometimes this current is so hot it all but boils and other times it’s barely lukewarm, hardly noticeable, but always the current is present, if only you plunge your hands in just an inch or two farther down in the water. ![]() “There is, below the surface of every conversation in which intimacies are shared, an erotic current. "Her hair was down and her cheeks were stiff and pink from smiling and the freckles on her neck, down her forearms, dotting her ankles, they were shining, they were giving off some kind of heat, she was glowing."Īgain, I don't think this was a bad book, and if it interests you, I'd definitely encourage you to pick it up it just wasn't what I was looking for and I found it rather unremarkable at the end of the day. I found that Popkey attempted to imitate the features of verbal speech in a way that came across to me as forced and labored it was peak stylized MFA-prose. This book is largely told in chunks of dialogue characters relaying monologues to the narrator. Basically: this is a book of commentary and ideas, and that's not an inherently bad or valueless thing I just failed to engage with it.Īnyway, the thing that actually grated on me more than anything was Popkey's writing. The aptly unnamed narrator of Topics of Conversation feels like a prototype of Generic Young Woman Angst - maybe that's the point, maybe not - but her struggles all felt very Grand and Societal without being grounded in the microcosm enough to hold my interest. But for me the difference between these two authors lies in the fact that Rooney explores themes through character, and Popkey explores themes at the expense of character. Both authors interrogate themes on womanhood, sex, sexuality, and give voice to a subset of young women who may have never seen these topics addressed so starkly in fiction. The Rachel Cusk comparisons are a dime a dozen, and I will spare you from that seeing as I've never read Rachel Cusk I will instead address the Sally Rooney comparisons. But at the same time, this did literally nothing for me, so here we are. ![]() In a way I feel a bit bad contributing to this book's overwhelmingly negative reception, because I do think it has more going for it than its low Goodreads rating might suggest, and I can see where others could get something out of it. You might feel a little uncomfortable, like you’re overhearing a conversation that has become far too vulnerable. As the narrator tells us in the very first chapter, “I am never more covetous than when someone tells me a story, a secret…” As you race through this novel, you’ll understand exactly what she means. This is a provocative novel that pulses with curiosity, and it flows like actual conversations-moving from the mundane to the profane to the profound all within a few sentences. ![]() It is a feast of intimacies that I gulped up greedily. These conversations, primarily with other women, are usually unrelated to one other, but all are about sex, fear, motherhood, power, and disgust. The title of this brisk, slim novel hints at its atypical structure-in lieu of a conventional plot, this novel takes us through twenty disparate years of the unnamed narrator’s life.Įach chapter of this debut is a different conversation taking place during the unnamed narrator’s life, from college years to newlywed status to motherhood. Topics of Conversation is my worst nightmare come true: a book in which my darkest, most shameful, most secret thoughts are laid bare on the page. Edgy, wry, and written in language that sizzles with intelligence and eroticism, this novel introduces an audacious and immensely gifted new novelist. In exchanges about shame and love, infidelity and self-sabotage, Popkey touches upon desire, disgust, motherhood, loneliness, art, pain, feminism, anger, envy, and guilt. “Shrewd and sensual, Popkey's debut carries the scintillating charge of a long-overdue girls' night." - O, The Oprah MagazineĪ Best Book of the Year by TIME, Esquire, Real Simple, Marie Claire, Glamor, Bustle, and moreĬomposed almost exclusively of conversations between women-the stories they tell each other, and the stories they tell themselves- Topics of Conversation careens through twenty years in the life of an unnamed narrator hungry for experience and bent on upending her life. A compact tour de force about sex, violence, and self-loathing from a ferociously talented new voice in fiction, perfect for fans of Sally Rooney, Rachel Cusk, Lydia Davis, and Jenny Offill. ![]()
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