46 pages • 1 hour read
Conversations with Friends
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BetaPart 2, Chapters 29-31Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 29 Summary
Frances gets a barista job at a local café. Since the breakup with Nick and her falling out with Bobbi, she is isolated and growing increasingly worried about her father’s isolation as well. She sends Nick the €200 she owes him but hears nothing in return.
During an episode of her endometriosis, she tries once again to go to class but cannot even respond to her teacher’s question. When she tries to walk home, she can barely support herself to stay upright and stops to gather herself in a church. She begins to pray, despite not believing in God, but faints. A woman in the church helps revive her and she manages to make it home.
Still disoriented when she arrives, she calls Melissa and asks why she sent Bobbi the story. This leads to a frank discussion between the women, with both admitting they did not like each other when they first met. Melissa accuses Frances of judging her for being wealthy, as if Melissa was just a sellout. Frances responds by saying she was jealous of Melissa’s money. Though the conversation is hostile in parts, it ends with Frances saying she should have been kinder to Melissa and admitting she has been going through a hard time. Melissa grows concerned about her, but she hurries off the phone.
Next, she emails Bobbi a rambling apology, confessing that she still loves Bobbi and apologizing for all the mess with Nick and Melissa. She closes the email with the question, “Is it possible we could develop an alternative method of loving each other?” (286). Bobbi comes to her apartment late that night and tells her it was a weird email, but she loves Frances, too.
Part 2, Chapter 30 Summary
In the weeks following Bobbi and Frances’s reunion, the two resume a sexual relationship, but decide not to label themselves as girlfriends and just be content with what they have in the moment. Bobbi’s opinion of Melissa has clearly fallen; she now thinks Nick and Melissa were only ever using her and Frances and were always going to return to their own twisted relationship. Bobbi also has hard truths for Frances, telling her that she has a habit of thinking she can do whatever she wants to her partners and never hurt them because she assumes her partners are more powerful than she is. Meanwhile, Frances continues not telling anyone about her endometriosis and takes painkillers constantly. She also continues to be worried about her father, who keeps calling her occasionally, always sounding depressed.
Part 2, Chapter 31 Summary
While shopping at a bookstore a month after the breakup with Nick, Frances gets a phone call from him. When she picks up, she can tell he has called her by accident, having meant to call Melissa. When they both realize what has happened, neither is in a rush to end the call. She says she waited for him to call her, and he replies that he thought she didn’t want him to and wanted to respect her wishes, despite wanting to talk to her. He has heard she’s back with Bobbi, but she explains she and Bobbi are not exactly a traditional couple.
She tells him about the endometriosis and asks his advice about whether to tell Bobbi. He reacts with appropriate concern and advises her to tell Bobbi. They discuss that their relationship was probably always doomed, but he also wonders if it would work if he picked her up in his car right now; he knows from earlier in the call that they are in the same neighborhood. He even confesses that if he told her where he was now, he thinks he would just stay there, sitting in his car in the parking lot for hours, just in case she decided to come to him. She takes a pause, then tells him to come pick her up.
Part 2, Chapters 29-31 Analysis
The final lines of the novel leave open an array of possibilities. Frances seems to be getting back together with Nick after moving on from the affair and finding renewed possibility with Bobbi, but what will that reunion look like? How will it affect the non-labeled relationship she has with Bobbi? How will Melissa react, when readers know she has been ambivalent about granting permission to the affair and she has openly admitted her resentment of Frances? Will this decision destroy any semblance of good will between the group of four or will all of them, like Frances and Bobbi, develop an “alternative way” of loving each other? Rooney does not answer any of these questions, but rather leaves Frances in the middle of a complicated transition to adulthood. She has learned that her assumptions about people’s motivations are often wrong, that putting up a mask of invulnerability often drives people away, and that no meaningful friendship can survive on dishonesty and withheld feelings. But she has yet to figure out what she wants and what she considers ethical in the context of romantic love.
Other elements of Frances’s life are in flux when the novel ends. She has not yet figured out how to manage her chronic illness, and she still lives with the specter of her father’s alcoholism and depression hanging over her, showing up in occasional phone calls during which he sounds alarmingly depressed and even as though he potentially has suicidal thoughts. While readers might expect these calls to lead up to some culminating event, they never do, instead haunting the periphery of Frances’s life. Her illness and her father’s failing mental health have no obvious end points in the future, just like her relationship with Nick. Her journey into adulthood will involve the constant process of choosing how to navigate and prioritize these concerns.
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By Sally Rooney
