Comparing Sally Rooney's two novels

There are many similarities between Sally Rooney's newest novel, Normal People, and her previous novel, Conversations with Friends: Both involve close examination of the course of a romance/sexual liaison, both - as one title indicates - are told largely through extended dialog (I think she would be good at writing for the stage except that...), neither contains - at least so far (not quite half-way through NP) much action in the conventional sense, both set among the intelligentsia and the committed in contemporary Ireland, Dublin mostly. Yet there are differences, too: NP covers a greater span of time, which is to its benefit - we see the relationship between the young man (Connell) and woman (Marianne) evolve and develop over time. The principal characters in NP are more conventional - intelligent college students, she of a leftward bent - as opposed to the artistic set of Conversations. The relationships themselves in NP are far more conventional (as the title wryly hints) than those in Conversations, which involved extramarital and "gay" sex, where as the leads in NP cold be art of a teenage romcom, or so it seems thus far, surprises may await. And the conversations in said novel are often text messages or emails - not so in at least the first half of NP. Altogether, NP is the more accessible novel - though anyone entering either domain has to recognize that SR narrates through extended dialogue that, to me, doesn't feel realistic re the men's voices: the male leads in both of these novels engage in long analyses of their relationship, amorous and sexual, and are extremely attentive to the nuances and feelings of their highly sensitive partners - lots of apologies and mea culpi throughout both novels; there may be guys who think and speak like this, but not many I think. Maybe things are different in Ireland; I was surprised that the young couple was living together in their first year of college/university - an unlikely rush into serious territory by American standards it seems. Also surprised that there's relatively little discussion of politics, given the author's well-known leftists commitments. That said, both novels are really intelligent and they keep you, or at least me, engaged as I want to follow the course of true, or untrue, love, and how it runs for these characters.