Topics of Conversation
Published on 27. February 2020
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-1-78816-404-7 (ISBN)
Description
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?
From the coast of the Adriatic to the salt spray of Santa Barbara, the narrator of Topics of Conversation maps out her life through two decades of bad relationships, motherhood, crisis and consolation. The novel unfurls through a series of conversations - in private with friends, late at night at parties with acquaintances, with strangers in hotel rooms, in moments of revelation, shame, cynicism, envy and intimacy. Sizzling with enigmatic desire, Miranda Popkey's debut novel 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.
'A pleasingly unsentimental novel about attraction and repulsion and the fluid line between the two. Popkey writes about these emotional eddies with such thrilling detachment you'll wonder why you ever worried about love at all.' Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation
From the coast of the Adriatic to the salt spray of Santa Barbara, the narrator of Topics of Conversation maps out her life through two decades of bad relationships, motherhood, crisis and consolation. The novel unfurls through a series of conversations - in private with friends, late at night at parties with acquaintances, with strangers in hotel rooms, in moments of revelation, shame, cynicism, envy and intimacy. Sizzling with enigmatic desire, Miranda Popkey's debut novel 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.
'A pleasingly unsentimental novel about attraction and repulsion and the fluid line between the two. Popkey writes about these emotional eddies with such thrilling detachment you'll wonder why you ever worried about love at all.' Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation
Reviews / Votes
Each of the chapters in this exacting, exhilarating debut novel records a deeply intimate discussion the capricious, now-38-year-old narrator has had over nearly two decades with friends, maternal figures, and later, fellow single mothers. Our guess is that this book will be the topic of many conversations in 2020. * O The Oprah Magazine * Over the span of 20 years, an unnamed narrator has conversations with an eclectic set of women - conversations about shame and love, sexuality and power. Envy and guilt. Motherhood. Loneliness. The slim book is smart and raw, and Popkey dives head-on into difficult, well - how else to say it? - topics of conversation. * Washington Post * A sustained, Sally Rooney-esque brooding on our simultaneous but conflicting yearnings for autonomy and "being a vessel for the desire of others' ... As Rachel Cusk's narrator observes in Transit, "The moments when life could be observed in a meaningful arrangement were rare." Popkey's narrator traverses a series of inflection points over the course of seventeen years. She hopes to excavate some sort of arc, a scaffolding of her inner thoughts, from these discursive flashes.' * The New York Times * Miranda Popkey's debut explores the paradox of longing to assert control and longing to lose it ... She depicts what it feels like to exist, actually live, at that intersection, which can so often bring about paralysis. * New Yorker * Formally adventurous and blisteringly current, this debut novel spanning almost two decades of conversations between women wrestles with the stories women tell about desire, friendship, and violence * Esquire * Topics of Conversation masterfully maps the unknowable terrain of intimacy * Boston Globe * As she explores her own history through a shifting lens of female rivalries and friendships, the book's surface coolness begins to peel away, revealing the raw, uncommon nerve of a radically honest storyteller. * Entertainment Weekly * In luminous prose, Popkey explores the intricacies of love and desire and female friendship. Every page sparks with intelligence. -- Kirstin Valdez Quade, author of Night at the Fiestas An intimate evisceration of our narrow imaginings of female sexuality -- Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! Penetrating, brutal, a brilliant new voice in contemporary fiction -- Ben Marcus If you're a fan of Sally Rooney's work, then you can't go wrong by picking up a copy of Topics Of Conversation ... Popkey explores thought-provoking topics including female desire, relationships, consent, sex and anger. She's a fresh voice, and one that it's certainly worth listening to. * Vogue *More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Profile Books Ltd
Product notice
Trade binding
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 144 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
395 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78816-404-7 (9781788164047)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Miranda Popkey has written for Harper's Magazine, The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. She lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Topics of Conversation is her first novel.