An autistic woman has been left feeling ashamed after identifying with the narrator of a novel that everybody else hates, it has been reported.

Paige Thomas, 26, attended a local reading group last Monday evening to discuss Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends. She was about to pipe up that she found the internal monologue of Frances immensely relatable, before everybody else revealed they despised the character.

“God, she’d be a nightmare to know,” fellow reader Ellie Mulligan, 30, said.

“You’re supposed to loathe her, I think,” Freya Emerson, 23, another member of the group, agreed. “But unlikeable characters are always interesting, aren’t they?”

The group went on to describe Frances as extremely narcissistic and selfish, and reached the shared consensus of being appalled she’d even consider an affair with somebody else’s husband.

“Yeah, she’s a piece of shit,” Thomas muttered, looking at the ground.


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