Observations on Conversations with Friends - more on Sally Rooney

I wrote previously about Sally Rooney's Normal People (NP). It's fair to say that I was not especially impressed. But I have now read Conversations with Friends (CWF) and doing so has changed my thinking about NP. It's not that I am any more impressed with NP than I was, but I have a better understanding of what NP was trying to do and why it was so well-received.

Below the break I set out, first, what is good about CWF (especially compared to NP), then a couple of caveats and, finally, why I think NP got much higher praise than it deserved.