Conversations with Friends

Whose perspective is most likely to challenge Frances’s as a point-of-view character? How would our understanding of Frances change from this new perspective?

Because Melissa is the character that the novel’s narrator, Frances, interacts with on the least regular basis, she is the character the reader gets to know the least. Were you sympathetic or unsympathetic to her? Did your opinion of her change throughout the novel or remain the same? Why?

When Frances reads Melissa’s long email revealing that Nick was committed to a psychiatric ward in a hospital for several weeks, the news feels very important and adult to her, so much so that she says think thinks of Melissa and Nick in a new way: “Nick and Melissa were like my parents bringing me into the world” (228). How do Nick and Melissa function as surrogate parent figures in the novel, and what is the effect of this?

Compare and contrast Frances’s relationships with Nick and Bobbi. Is one more central or formative than the other?

What purpose does the character of Frances’s father serve in the book? What significance does the lack of resolution regarding his fate have to the book as a whole?

What are the effects of the age gap between Frances and Nick, and how do these effects impact the novel?

Throughout the novel, Frances is aware of the wealth difference between herself and Bobbi and between herself and Nick and Melissa. How does this awareness affect her relationships and the novel as a whole?

Compare and contrast Frances’s development over the course of the novel with Bobbi’s.