Summary

Miranda Popkey’s Topics of Conversation employs an unnamed, first person narrator who speaks in the past tense. The novel begins with a conversation between the narrator and her friend’s mother, Artemisia, in Italy in 2000. The narrator has accompanied her friend Camila on a family vacation, agreeing to watch Camila’s younger brothers while Camila enjoys her stay, flirting and flaunting her beauty with the young men on the beach.

The narrator has studied literature as an undergraduate and is planning to go to graduate school. She reads Sylvia Plath novels and, while Camila is flirting with boys, tends to Camila’s two younger brothers, Matteo and Tomás. Artemisia, Camila’s mother, is the one who gives the narrator instructions, all of which focus on boundaries: for the first week, the narrator attempts to interpret this instruction by “trying to deny...