Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Friends Like These

Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

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cbr11bingo – Listicle: Slate’s Best Books of 2017 After reading and thoroughly enjoying Sally Rooney’s Normal People, I knew it was only a matter of time before I went back and read her first novel. Conversations With Friends is about the interpersonal dynamics between four people: Frances, a young writer at university who identifies as bisexual, her best-friend and ex-girlfriend Bobbi, and Melissa and Nick, a married couple ten years older than them that they meet in Dublin’s literary scene. Melissa is a photojournalist and […]

This wasn’t the conversation I was trying to have.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

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I read Rooney’s “Normal People” a couple of months ago and it is, easily, one of the best books that I have read this year. I wish, however, that I had read this book BEFORE I read “Normal People.” In a lot of ways, this debut reads like a practice run for her second book. Frances and Bobbi, once lovers, have settled into a very close friendship while at college in Dublin. When a writer/photographer, Melissa, wants to do a piece about their spoken word […]

What is normal?

Normal People by Sally Rooney

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Bingo Square: Cannonballer Says. So many reviewers for this one but Manimama and faintingviolet loved it. I wish I had liked it as much as them. Over the span of a few years we follow classmates Connell and Marianne. At school he is popular and seemingly outgoing while she is a loner who is often made fun of. What connects them is Connell’s mother, who works as a cleaner at Marianne’s house. There they get to know each other a little before starting a sexual […]

“Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.”

Normal People by Sally Rooney

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This book damn near killed me. And I’m still not quite sure what to say about it. On the surface the plot is simple; two people from different walks of life come together, don’t always communicate great and life ensues. The book is told in alternating chapters from Connell and Marianne’s perspective, jumping in time with each chapter. They meet as teenagers and start having sex and (maybe) falling in love. Connell feels like he is truly himself when Marianne is around. Marianne falls under […]

This Time, You Were Wrong, Bookseller

Normal People by Sally Rooney

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Best for: People who enjoy coming of age stories that are (or try to be?) a bit edgier. In a nutshell: Marianne and Connell are classmates in a small town in London. His mother cleans her house. They do not run in the same social circles. Things transpire, and they grow up. Worth quoting: “Committee members of college clubs, who are dressed up in black tie very frequently, and who inexplicably believe the internal workings of student societies are interesting to normal people.” “In school […]

I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

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This is the first novel of Irish novelist Sally Rooney who was nominated for the Booker Prize last summer. I haven’t read that novel, but I likely will sometime this summer. But this novel stands out primarily because of the author’s age–she was 25 or so when this was published. Normally, I wouldn’t care that much as age sometimes means something and sometimes doesn’t, but you couldn’t read a thing about this novel or her second one without her age being a primary focus of […]



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