Topics of Conversation

Each of the chapters in this exacting, exhilarating debut novel records a deeply intimate discussion ... Our guess is that this book will be the topic of many conversations in 2020. * O The Oprah Magazine * 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 <i>Dept. of Speculation</i> 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 * 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 * 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 * 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 *