"Always do what you are afraid to do" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Monday, April 6, 2020

Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey



A very unique book - I’m not sure I “enjoyed” the experience, but it was addicting and compelling enough for me to keep picking it up until I had read all of it. And I must say, it was worth it! While I can understand how there might be some who won’t like this book (unusual, crass, even repulsive at times), there is a lot of merit between its pages too. The narrator/protagonist definitely has her flaws, as do a lot of the other characters we meet, but there is something so fundamentally “real” about them all; conversations that feel vulnerable, relatable, and unearth the deepest thoughts a lot of us might have that we never really bring up!

The journey of the book almost felt “Kerouac-esque” to me, but with majority female characters with a few sidelined male characters peppered through. A quote towards the end of the book made me pause, and think upon the lines I had read as well as what the book was attempting, and it all made sense: “The writer who depicts an abhorrent male character still demands that the reader pay the abhorrent man his attention” - similarly, how many abhorrent women have we, as readers, been demanded to pay attention? I believe this book attempts to do just that, and with that in mind, I’ve determined that it was a pretty good read!
 

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