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.

Made up of a series of conversations between women (but in which men play major, generally negative parts), this is a compelling and raw depiction of a life and lives. Lots to admire, both in the skill of the writing and the power of the stories told, which have an immediacy which makes other autobiographical fictions seem mannered and polite in comparison. I could have done without the Norman Mailer section in the middle of the book and the version I read lacked the location/date headings referred to at the end, which would might have helped anchor the stories, but there is lots here to wince at and particularly admire, not least the closing "works (not) cited" section.

I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy this book. It felt rather self-conscious to me, and lacked depth. Maybe this was the structure of the conversational style, which leant the book a detached air. I didn’t care about the MC at all as a result of this.

When I finished the book I looked back at the blurb and was surprised to find it was set over 20 years. I didn’t get that in the book, and indeed, it felt more like all of the stories were from a 20 year old’s perspective.

I would compare this book to a Three Women, which I know a lot of people loved, so if you liked that you’ll enjoy this.

This novel is made up of conversations between women - mothers, daughters, friends - over a number of years.
The conversations span topics as diverse as desire, sexuality, motherhood and marriage and divorce.
It reads like stream of consciousness but is well-structured and beautifully crafted: you feel you are listening - a fly on the wall - to real dialogue.
The narrator pieces together her life through these conversations and they feel more like short stories or diary entries than a novel.
This novel will not be everyone’s cup of tea because of this unusual structure but it is clever and darkly funny and always devastatingly honest.

A really sharp, poignant novel that spans over fifteen years and emphasize on the unnamed narrator's examination of her life through her or other people's stories. Brutally honest, gripping and fun read.