A major debut novel about the hidden truths of women's lives by a remarkable new writer.
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, late at night at 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 and the men they've known. 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.
About the Author
Miranda Popkey was born in Santa Cruz, California in 1987. She graduated with a BA in Humanities from Yale in 2009, and with an MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018. She has written for, among other outlets, New Republic, the New Yorker's Page-Turner blog, Paris Review Daily, The Hairpin, The Awl, GQ.com and The Cut.
Industry Reviews
Each of the chapters in this exacting, exhilarating debut novel records a deeply intimate discussion the capricious, now-38-year-old narrator has had over nearly two decades with friends, maternal figures, and later, fellow single mothers. Our guess is that this book will be the topic of many conversations in 2020. * O The Oprah Magazine *
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 *
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 *
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 *
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 *
