Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Frances, Bobbi, Nick and Melissa ask each other endless questions. As their relationships unfold, in person and online, they discuss sex and friendship, art and literature, politics and gender, and, of course, one another.

Twenty-one-year-old Frances is at the heart of it all, bringing us this tale of a complex menage-a-quatre and her affair with Nick, an older married man.

You can read Conversations with Friends as a romantic comedy, or you can read it as a feminist text.

You can read it as a book about infidelity, about the pleasures and difficulties of intimacy, or about how our minds think about our bodies.

However you choose to read it, it is an unforgettable novel about the possibility of love.

Described by the New York Times as a ‘new kind of adultery novel’, Conversations with Friends is also sharp, bitingly funny fiction that digs deep into identity and communication; slicing into the divide between who we are, and who we present ourselves to be. Hooking a reader from the first page, this modern love story about growing up and the infinite complexities of intimacy is a masterful debut from a major new talent.

Our favourite quote: 'You can love more than one person, she said. That's arguable. Why is it any different from having more than one friend? You're friends with me and you also have other friends, does that mean you don't really value me? I don't have other friends, I said.'