Both books are crowd-pleasers for anyone, especially 20-somethings obsessed with the question: “Beautiful world, where are you?”
On the surface, Conversations with Friends is a novel that explores the nature of romantic relationships, including an affair between Frances, a young poet, and Nick, a 30-something married actor. But at the story’s heart is the porous, intimate friendship between Frances and Bobbi, her former girlfriend and current roommate. Around the time Conversations launched, author Sally Rooney named Franny and Zooey as having the greatest influence on her writing. J.D. Salinger’s novel is a portrait of two siblings as they come of age in the 1950s, and it was originally published as two (very long) short stories in The New Yorker. “Franny” takes place during an ambivalent date between college student Franny and her long-distance boyfriend. “Zooey,” on the other hand, picks up her story via her 25-year-old brother Zooey, who helps Franny work through her mid-semester existential crisis with a life-changing phone call. Both books are crowd-pleasers for anyone, especially 20-somethings obsessed with the question: “Beautiful world, where are you?”