“Conversations With Friends” by Sally Rooney (post 2): Some of the protagonist’s peculiar, multiple personality-related thoughts that are rarely, if ever, mentioned in reviews

Approaching the midpoint of this novel, I look back at some of the interesting things that Frances, the first-person protagonist, has said [in bold with added comments]:

“I liked to sit in the library to write essays, allowing my sense of time and personal identity to dissolve…” (1, p. 33).[host personality allows switch to alternate personality]

“Even looking in the mirror made me nervous…Eventually the features of my face seemed to come apart from one another or at least lose their ordinary relationships to each other…” (1, p. 35). [Persons with multiple personality see odd things in mirror due to mixture of images of various personalities.]

“I was aware of the fact that he [Nick, a professional actor] could pretend to be anyone he wanted to be, and I wondered if he also lacked ‘a real personality’ the same as I did” (1, p. 37). [Reiterates protagonist's host personality facade.]

“I tried stamping my feet as loudly as I could to distract myself from bad thoughts, but people gave me curious looks and I felt cowed. I knew that was weak of me. Bobbi [her girlfriend and former lover] was never cowed by strangers” (1, p. 50). [Bad thoughts from alternate personalities.]

At the end of a visit with her father, she cleaned his kitchen. “Watching the soap bubbles slide silently down the blades of the kitchen knives, I had a sudden desire to harm myself. Instead I put away the salt and pepper shakers…” (1, p. 51). [From an alternate personality.]

Visiting Melissa’s and Nick’s house, “For a few seconds I imagined that this was my house, that I had grown up here, and the things in it belonged to me” (1, p. 53). [Odd fantasy from an alternate personality.]

“Eventually Nick looked over and I looked back. I felt a key turning hard inside my body, turning so forcefully that I could do nothing to stop it…Neither of us gestured or waved, we just looked at one another, as if we were already having a private conversation that couldn’t be overheard” (1, pp. 64-65). [From an alternate personality.]

“I hadn’t really wanted to feel sympathetic to Melissa, and now I felt her moving outside my frame of sympathy entirely, as if she belonged to a different story with different characters. When we went upstairs I told Nick I had never had sex with a man before…But when he asked me if I was sure I wanted to do all this, I heard myself say: I didn’t really come over just to talk, you know” (1, p. 68). [Out of character attitude from an alternate personality.]

“…what I found most endearing about him…was that he was attracted to plain and emotionally cold women like me” (1, p. 81). Her personalities differ with each other in their sexual feelings.] 

“I fantasized about punching myself in the stomach” (1, p. 132). [Arguing with or impulses to assault oneself are typical of persons with more than one personality.]

Comments [added Oct. 5] 

Peculiarities and inconsistencies above in bold with added comments. Most readers gloss over these things that make no sense to them and which they do not recognize to be a kind of thing explainable by the presence of alternate personalities.

They are not labeled in the novel as having to do with multiple personality, because the author did not think of it in those terms and had no intention of raising that issue, which evidently reflected the author's own psychology. 

1. Sally Rooney. Conversations With Friends. New York, Hogarth, 2017.