The opening chapter takes place in 2000, while the narrator is on summer break and visiting a friend in Italy. But Popkey’s narrative isn’t sweeping instead, these deeply intimate conversations and the narrator’s framing allow the reader glimpses into moments-big and small-as she defines, revises, and questions her story. These chapters follow the narrator over almost twenty years, as she works on a PhD in English literature, then abandons the program, moves from Ann Arbor to California, marries and divorces her husband, and becomes a mother. This direct musing on the nature and possibility of these discussions feels intentional-the powerful intimacy of conversations is precisely what the novel explores and enacts.Įach of the nine chapters centers on a conversation, most often one the narrator has with another woman. Though not all of the women share-or even respond favorably-the narrator reflects on the powerful intimacy of conversations: the potential to share secrets, create identities, and bind people together. The narrator sips wine and, suddenly appalled by how little she knows about these women and their lives before becoming mothers, she asks each to tell her story. In a pivotal chapter of Miranda Popkey’s debut novel Topics of Conversation, the unnamed narrator joins a group of women-some coworkers, all new mothers, all single-for an evening.
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