I've had this book on my radar for a while now, and finally decided to jump in after picking up a physical copy. In Topics of Conversation, we follow our narrator through the creative premise of (as implied in the title) her having conversations with other women over the course of her life. Each chapter/conversation touches on different facets of female sexuality, and contains immense insight. Readers should note triggers for rape, stabbing, references to miscarriage and gaslighting.
 
While I totally bought both the premise and the substance of this novel, I found myself a bit put off by the writing style. It read to me as quite forgettable, and too "have done a creative writing grad school course". I can see what she's trying to achieve with the style, i.e. making it conversational, with all the twists and turns and distractions, but the premise is clever enough that I don't think it was necessary. Indeed, the flashes of insight Popkey has manage to shine through in spite of the voice, not because of it.
 
Popkey addresses challenging issues without sugar coating them, or trying to make the reader comfortable. We look at the experience of realising same-sex attraction, the way people undermine what women know to be true, the complexities of marriage and the sometimes brutal nature of friendship. But there's always an emotional distance between the reader and narrator, which felt like a missed opportunity to me.
 
I'm glad I've read this one - there really are some profound and meaningful insights within - but overall it fell short of being a favourite given the style and emotional distance.
 
I received an ebook copy of Topics of Conversation from Serpent's Tail via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I loved this breathless, drunken, juggernaut of a novel. I've never come across a narrative style quite like it and once you give yourself over to it and stop expecting a point to it or a specific plot line you can just relax and enjoy the ride. The book was laden with sexual overtones and felt slightly erotic in a seedy way. This book is so female. I know that is obvious but it really resonates as things that I've experienced and things I recognise from my own friends over the years. 
Its hard to truly describe this novel without just saying "read it!" so I shall end with that.

I wanted to love this fragmented novel told from different perspectives but unfortunately the tricksy narrative made it hard to get into. Popkey writes well but for this reader, she needs an editor who can keep her story on the straight and if not narrow then on a runway. Some excellent and tender moments but the parts don’t add up to the sum. I will definitely read her next novel.

I was intrigued from beginning to end, and enjoyed the reading experience.  I was interested in the characters, and looked forward to learning where their stories would lead.

This book definitely reminded me of a Jenny Offill book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. 
I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes Offill and Rooney.

The narrator of Topics of Conversation is acerbic, witty, dark. In a fragmentary narrative, we are guided – or perhaps pulled – through a 17-year period of her life, as seen through a fragmentary series of conversations. We get the impression that she’s excavating her inner life, in the effort of imposing some kind of narrative meaning to it, refining and honing the prose of her experience. ‘Look,’ as one irate character remarks, ‘you’re all imagining yourselves as people in some kind of story.’

And yet our unnamed protagonist realises – has always realised – that it is a ‘folly’ to settle on the governing narrative of one’s life, especially at the young age of twenty-one, when we first meet her. The particularly powerful parts of the narrative are when she interrogates the self-conscious way in which we tell stories and in which we stack together the moments of our life as if they were part of a story, as if we are winking to an unknown reader.  

‘Perhaps sometimes you find yourself doing things because you think the narrative arc calls for it, or because you’ve grown bored with your own plot.’

Despite our narrator’s references to narrative arc and plot, there is none of the traditional narrative trajectory here. All we get are moments. This isn’t a novel for readers who want a clearly defined beginning, middle and end – or even any kind of plot that can be put into words. It’s not always easy to get at the essence of this novel, to articulate clearly what it is ‘about’ – and that almost seems to be the point.

‘Truth didn’t help. Everything that had ever happened could never be integrated into something coherent. The trick was picking the right moments.’

With a startling intimacy, Popkey interrogates modern womanhood and all that comes with it. Our narrator unflinchingly talks to us about sex and power and motherhood – what it means to desire and to be in control and what it means to desire and not be in control. The novel takes us to some complicated and nuanced places. It’s a dark and difficult territory for our narrator, who is steeped in self-loathing.

‘When we thought about sex we thought mostly about ways to defend against what we didn’t want instead of ways to pursue what we did.’

The breathless writing style is circuitous and rambling at times, folding back on itself and bending the conventional rules of grammar – which, if you can get past it (and apparently many readers cannot), is arguably a true reflection of the way that conversations between people happen.

This is an extremely polarising book, if the Goodreads reviews are anything to go by, and it definitely won’t be for everyone. It isn’t the perfect example of an experimental or fragmentary style. The prose is overwrought at times, and some of the passages are more worth investing in than others. And yet, I could hardly stop reading. At one point, our narrator remarks – ‘conversation is flirtation. Tease out enough rope and the listener, she’ll hang on your every word.’ And I did.  

With thanks to the publisher for the advanced copy. Topics of Conversation was published in January 2020.

You will either love this book or hate it, personally, I love this method of writing - like a meandering stream of consciousness, stories and conversations that all blend into one. Conversations the author has experienced with other women about love and sex, but mostly sex. Everything about this book was starting real, the tone, the language. This must be non-fiction… is it?

Desire, disgust, motherhood, loneliness, art, pain, feminism, anger, envy, guilt--written in language that sizzles with intelligence and eroticism. Composed almost exclusively of conversations between women.

Just couldn't get into this, sadly. Feels like the author, while obviously good at writing, is so present that it's difficult to get into any flow of the book.

This book deceived me at the outset; the first chapter provided a narrative of a young woman going on holiday with a friend’s family but not ostensibly with her friend; she was there in the capacity of nanny to her friend's younger brothers. This isn’t what wrong footed me though, it was the setting up of the characters and relationships that made me think the story would continue on from there but except for a passing reference to the mother of the family later on, none of the family are mentioned again. 

Instead Chapter two starts with a different set of characters and I wasn’t even sure if the narrator was the same young woman from Chapter one or someone else as there was little to connect the two. This felt disorienting and continued throughout although the jolts were not as big from this point on and there was a narrative thread- it just felt somewhat disjointed and hard to follow. Perhaps this was in part because the protagonist is not given a name but more specifically because the book serves more as a series of conversations rather than a compelling story. Ok so perhaps this was the author’s intention and there is after all a huge clue in the title. This might suit some readers but didn’t suit me particularly. 

That said, the conversations are absorbing and raise many interesting topics- I enjoyed reading them and got caught up in each vignette, each relationship, enough to want to read on until the end. However it seemed to me that there was a dispassionate stance taken, one in which I felt little connection or empathy for the protagonist or anyone else for that matter. I couldn't warm to the narrator and all the other characters are lightly drawn sketches and it is not possible to get to know them, not really, as they pass through the narrator's life.

I prefer to read books that make me feel something, where there is a depth to the characters to engage my interest in them and dare I say, some sense of their psychology and what makes them who they are. For example, the narrator develops a drink problem but we don’t really understand why apart from one line which whilst perceptive and acutely observed is nonetheless dissatisfying:

"What I’m saying is that my life, like the lives of most people, lacks an origin story. I mean one with any explanatory power."

Nor do we get a proper sense of how this impacts on her baby son, nor indeed how she manages to stop drinking. All this is conveyed like a surface reflection  or like cardboard cut outs to my mind. 

I suppose it depends what you look for in a book and this may well be to other reader’s taste but I have to say that overall this was for me a very well written book with a promising and intriguing start but that ultimately I found it to be a disappointing read.

This is a story of one woman's passage through points in her life - teens, marriage, single motherhood - told through conversations mainly with other women about men.  

And...I mostly enjoyed the reading experience, in that it was interesting and I liked the writing style.  It threw out a lot of insights about relationships and identity that either resonated with me or at least made me pause to think about other women in my life.  But something about it left me cold.  The narrator isn't particularly likeable, but more than that I felt her life choices were poor.  And whilst neither of those things would ordinarily turn me off from a book (sometimes poor life choices can make for compelling reading), I think it was those elements in conjunction with her attitude and quite frankly weak excuses for her behaviour that made me really disconnect.  

This book says some really important things, about motherhood and relationships in particular.  Things which are often still taboo to touch on, like the <i>radical</i> idea that not every woman who becomes a mother finds that they enjoy it, or that sometimes we can actively dislike the expectation of being there for friends and family in their times of need.  I can understand why people have praised this book whilst others really disliked it, and feel I'm straddling the fence.  I suppose it boils down to this - I love what this book is saying, but I didn't always love the delivery method.

I admired this odd novel that dealt with a lot of things that could make a reader uncomfortable. 

When characters were telling stories their speech patterns seemed realistic, but also a little too similar. The stories were different but all of the characters could have been the same or interchangeable. 

I'm not sure how memorable I'll find this in time, partly because I read it so quickly. I think maybe it's more interesting than enjoyable but I did find it compelling.

At the end of this novel Popkey cites Rachel Cusk and Chris Kraus amongst her influences, so obviously I loved it. The protagonist is pretty unlikeable and self-involved, and definitely a destructive alcoholic, but the playful narrative meant that I was won over. Popkey’s narrator speaks directly to the reader, giving instructions like “remember I was drunk” and marks herself out as unreliable by saying things like “I’m often thinking of the better story because the actual story is so often boring” and “this next part is true.” The story of her adulthood (loosely a Bildungsroman I guess) is told chronologically in past tense, starting during college and ending in her late thirties, but the protagonist’s knowledge of her coming future creates a weird hybrid tense, discussing things like her “future now ex husband.” This debut novel isn’t perfect, but it’s made me really excited to see what comes from Popkey next.

Funny, engrossing and unique, Topics of Conversation is a story of a women (and some of her friends and family) told in individual chapters, taking places across years. Although without a traditional plot, it is written in a smart and captivating way. The writing style was a little difficult to follow a first, I sometimes found myself going back several pages to remember what I’m reading about. However, once I got going, the stories felt so real and relatable, I had to remind myself it is fiction. I related to some stories, I listened and learnt from others.
All in all, I really enjoyed this book. It was worth taking a moment to get into it and if it feels like it may not be your thing, I would urge you to pick it up.

The description of this novel really appealed to me. I love authors that dive into what it is to be a woman - the complexities, dark secrets, desires and loneliness. 

Whilst I read to the end of Topics of Conversation, I did not feel as connected to the narrator as I expected too. Its not because I didn't like her or connect to the subject matters that she explored, but the internal nature of the narrative and the run on sentences made for a frustrating read for me.

The conversations that make up this novel explore a wide range of emotions and experiences, but I felt very much like an outside observer, rather than gaining an insight into the true motivations of the characters. I finished the book and still wanted more impact.

As with all novels there will be people who rave about Topics of Conversation, but sadly it wasn't for me.

Topics of Conversation is a tense read, seething with a sustained and brutal honesty throughout. The whole text felt very cleverly infused with an underlying sense of dread, like disaster was only a few pages away at any time. It takes a while to get used to the cadence of the book; Popkey’s tone throughout is truly conversational, pausing for the interjections, observations, and gesticulation that we would encounter during real life conversations, all framed in a series of vignettes ranging from a conversation with her mother about her sex life to an interview with a friend of Norman Mailer’s. A stunning debut, perfect for fans of literary fiction.

You’re going to hear a lot that if you like Conversations with Friends this book is for you, but it isn’t fair to either book to say that they are completely the same. However, they are both well written books that focus on dialogue between characters, and what emerges about the characters speaking and listening as a consequence.

It is narrated by one woman, at first young and full of ideas about life art etc though looking back admits herself to be naive. She listens to narratives from people she meets, she reflects on them and moves on, though as she grows older she divulges more of her life to us.

The narratives are from women who cant seem to stop themselves talking and telling something secret or personal. We also follow the narrator to an exhibition of a womans pain, where she literally “makes a spectacle of herself”. It seems as though women who finally have an audience for their pain let it spill out, can’t contain not only their own pain but seem to be speaking to a larger female experience. It
made me think about how in order to break out as a writer a lot of young women in recent years have had to divulge horrible secrets for longreads etc to get themselves noticed.

The novel also makes use of different media like a video of someone telling a story about Norman Mailer, and in the comments section people calling the speaker a bitch, demonstrating some of the consequences of these conversations.

What really struck me about the book was at the end, as well as an acknowledgements section there was a section called “Emerged Out Of”, which was a lift of texts it was inspired by: books and films and tv shows, not just literary influences but all types. My only complaint is that there seemed to be a disconnect between the start and rest of it; she’s a student then suddently a mother and divorcee. This disconnect made me lose interest a bit in the conversations themselves which is disappointing but overall it was a very interesting book.

This novel reads like a series of short stories connected by narrator and theme - women, their sexuality and their relationships with men. No one comes out of it well. Everyone and the world is broken. The book is clever and well written. But... (you could hear that ‘but’ coming, I suspect and I feel like I should preface what follows with a ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ disclaimer.) I didn’t enjoy it. I found it cold and only engaging in moments. I don’t mind not liking a character but I didn’t care about anyone in this book. Maybe that was the point, but it makes for a hard read for me. Intellectually, I’m not sure if the book presents a vision of the world I don’t buy, or one I don’t like, possibly a bit of both.

I can see this being one of the big reads of 2020 - Miranda Popkey's novel stands up on its own merits, but for purposes of comparison I'd agree with the Goodreads blurb which recommends it for readers of Rachel Cusk and Jenny Offill, though at times I was reminded of the clarity in Sally Rooney's writing as well. 

The story follows an unnamed woman over the course of 15 years through the various conversations she has with different women she encounters - much like Cusk's Outline trilogy, these conversations range widely in content but each of them brings the reader somewhere closer to understanding the nature of humans and one's self, relationships, motherhood, shame and desire, and what it means to be a woman dealing with each of these things. I think the blurb sums things up pretty well: "What is the shape of a life? Is it the things that happen to us? Or is it the stories we tell about the things that happen to us?". Recommended!

A debut novel tightly wound around the narratives that women weave to make sense of their lives. The book follows conversations that the unnamed narrator has with other women - on the feminist guilt in enjoying rough sex and male dominance; on Freudian trajectories used to justify inaction; on the many subtle ways in which women indicate marital dissatisfaction. The narrator speaks intimately both with women who tell crass, ugly stories and with women who craft beautiful, romantic ones and there is an excitement in this divulging - ‘There is, below the surface of every conversation in which intimacies are shared, an erotic current.‘ Despite its loose structure, character growth is apparent over the course of the novel. The narrator matures out of narratives to a woman who in motherhood realises that ‘my life, like the lives of most people, lacks an origin story. I mean one with any explanatory power. Which means that my son could turn out any way and for any reason or for no reason at all. I’m not sure if it’s irony but here it is, at last I’ve found the thing I do want to control, and of course I can’t.’ The book is sometimes difficult to read because its stream of consciousness style has a tenuous relationship with punctuation, but I found it insightful and impressive nonetheless.

Thanks to NetGalley and Serpent's Tail/Profile Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A beautifully poignant ode to the rich tapestry of womanhood.

Having just finished "Girl, Woman, Other" by this year's Booker Prize Winner, Bernardine Evaristo, I was delighted to come across Miranda Pokey's, "Topics of Conversation". Like Evaristo's tour de force of a novel, Popkey explores with an eye to the beauty and complexities of female subjectivity, the rich tapestry of womanhood. Unlike Evaristo's novel, which is comprised of a  series of interlinked tales of different women, Popkey focuses her story on a sole female narrator recounting her conversations with other women over a period of 20 years. With the skill of a true storyteller, Popkey draws us into these series of tales/conversations with an intimacy normally reserved for the true voyeur - less a privileged guest of the author and more spy in the camp of another woman's subjectivity - her deepest darkest feelings laid bare to me, a stranger. "Topic of Conversation", in other words, made me uncomfortable in the best way possible; because this book had the feel of a discovery - the subversive, yet exciting glimpse into the life of another woman - less a sop to the whims of the reader and more a work of concentrated, unashamed originality.

A beautiful composed novel. #TopicsofConversation #NetGalley

Summary:
What is the shape of a life? Is it the things that happen to us? Or is it the stories we tell about the things that happen to us? Miranda Popkey's remarkable debut novel follows one woman as she makes her way through two decades of bad relationships, motherhood, crisis and consolation, each new episode narrated through the conversations she has with other women: in private with friends, at late-night parties with acquaintances, with strangers in hotel rooms, in moments of revelation, shame, intimacy, cynicism and desire. From the coast of the Adriatic to sun-soaked California, Topics of Conversation maps out one woman's life through the stories of the women around her. Full of the uncertainty of the present and the instability of the past, sizzling with enigmatic desire, it is a seductive exploration of life as a woman in the modern world, of the stories we tell ourselves and of the things we reveal only to strangers.