Name: The Friend: A Novel
Rating: 3.91025641025641 (78 reviews)
ISBN: 9780735219458

Sigrid Nunez

The Friend: A Novel

smile??

Eli Alvah Huckabee

WINNER OF THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A beautiful book … a world of insight into death, grief, art, and love." —Wall Street Journal "A penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory...Nunez has a wry, withering wit." —NPR "Dry, allusive and charming…the comedy here writes itself.” The New York Times A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog. When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building. While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them. Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.

A Novel

The Friend

- originally read this in 2024, wanted to reread it this year

- a book about a friendship that was far from perfect but deeply valued. the friend (only ever labeled as “you” in the novel) is a narcissistic, womanizing, unfaithful man that seemingly every woman in this story is obsessed with. he is, by most standards, a piece of shit, but his death pulls lots of memories for the narrator & motivates all these fits of research on depression and suicide

- i’m glad i read this again at this time in my life. not to get too personal, but i’ve had my friendships tested in the past 12 months in ways i’ve never experienced at any other point in my life. it was easy to link the narrator’s actions and regrets with my own. what burdens are worth bearing for people who are out of our lives? is the burden only an extension of our desire to have them back? to love them the way we used to? (“[...] do i believe that if i love apollo—beautiful, aging, melancholy apollo—i will wake one morning to find him gone and you in his place, back from the land of the dead?”)

- while grief and loss and companionship are the first impressions, they’re not the lasting images. she has so many things to say about misogyny, and sex trafficking, and other traumas, and how we recover from that (or, in some cases, how we don’t). the core of this novel, really, is about writing, and being a writer in a world filled with too many artists and not enough activists. while these are important and necessary things to bring to light, it distracted me from the actual characters of the novel, which was what attracted me to 

- still not the biggest fan of the ending.... the twist was appropriate considering the role of writing in the novel, but it kind of felt like a cop out to me

- originally read this in 2024, wanted to reread it this year

- a book about a friendship that was far from perfect but deeply valued. the friend (only ever labeled as “you” in the novel) is a narcissistic, womanizing, unfaithful man that seemingly every woman in this story is obsessed with. he is, by most standards, a piece of shit, but his death pulls lots of memories for the narrator & motivates all these fits of research on depression and suicide

- i’m glad i read this again at this time in my life. not to get too personal, but i’ve had my friendships tested in the past 12 months in ways i’ve never experienced at any other point in my life. it was easy to link the narrator’s actions and regrets with my own. what burdens are worth bearing for people who are out of our lives? is the burden only an extension of our desire to have them back? to love them the way we used to? (“[...] do i believe that if i love apollo—beautiful, aging, melancholy apollo—i will wake one morning to find him gone and you in his place, back from the land of the dead?”)

- while grief and loss and companionship are the first impressions, they’re not the lasting images. she has so many things to say about misogyny, and sex trafficking, and other traumas, and how we recover from that (or, in some cases, how we don’t). the core of this novel, really, is about writing, and being a writer in a world filled with too many artists and not enough activists. while these are important and necessary things to bring to light, it distracted me from the actual characters of the novel, which was what attracted me to the friend in the first place

- still not the biggest fan of the ending.... the twist was appropriate considering the role of writing in the novel, but it kind of felt like a cop out to me

"When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master ... the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them"--Amazon.com.

Ryan Mateyk

This was really beautiful. Less of a novel and more of a letter to the narrator’s recently deceased best friend. It’s a meditation on love, death, grief, dogs and the creative process. I feel like this could have been more meaningful to a writer, or artist, as the narrator often ponders on how grief can both hinder or catalyze the creative process. I really enjoyed this and Nunez is a really talented writer. Would recommend 👍🏻

WINNER OF THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD and a NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER: a moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog. 'A true delight: I genuinely fear I won't read a better novel this year' Financial Times 'Delicious ... An intensely pleasurable read because it is so accessible, capacious and clever' Sunday Times When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatised by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building. While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unravelling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them. Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion. "A beautiful book ... a world of insight into death, grief, art, and love." -Wall Street Journal A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 * A Financial Times 2018 Best Book: Critics Pick * A Buzzfeed Best Book of 2018 * A Bustle Best Fiction Book of 2018 * An NPR Best Book of 2018

Molly Bridge

Cassie B

I just finished this and I want to read it all over again. I can’t quite work out what to say about this book - Nunez’s writing style sometimes pulled me out of the narrative a little (I often had to reread to work out who was saying what - the first person narrative sometimes became a little muddled) but truly, this couldn’t even stop me from giving this book five stars. Nunez’s insight into friendships (in this case, the trickiest kind - one marred with conflict and sometimes loathing - that you can love a person who you often fundamentally disagree with or find problematic) is one of the most nuanced I can recall reading. I’m still working out how she managed to give these three characters the depth she did with such a pared back way of writing. And I don’t even know how to begin explaining my feelings about the relationship between the narrator and Apollo. Some of the best writing I’ve come across about the relationship between human & hound.

The book is sharp, funny, profoundly sad and so compassionate. Interestingly, the only character I liked was Apollo - but I found all relatable, in different ways. I love this book. I’m so glad I read it. I’m looking forward to reading it again.

A very unique read, a sort-of stream-of-consciousness style journey through grief, suicide and big dogs. Pretty funny in parts, uncomfortable in others, pretentious quite often, but actually very readable—and in the end, enjoyable.

Jack Harrison

Lauren Shull

I tried and tried to finish this book. I made it half way before giving up. It reads like a stream of consciousness journal. It wouldn't have bothered me if it didn't seem so tedious. For only being 200pages it took a very long time for her to acquire the dog. It just felt annoying and I wanted to keep skimming because the narrator consistently over explained.

Jason Porterfield

This is so beautifully written and evocative of of a friendship - or two friendships. There’s a touch of “kids these days” codgerism that I totally recognize from academia, but it’s forgivable here.

Olivera Mitić

Išla sam u biblioteku da pozajmim jedan drugi roman (koji nisu imali), a izašla sam potpuno spontano s ovim. Korice su mi u trenutku privukle pažnju i setila sam se da je Prijatelj ona jedna knjiga koju malo malo neko na internetu opiše kao "hidden gem".

I stvarno jeste. Uvukla mi se pod kožu i sad imam želju da napišem pismo Sigrid Nunjez da joj kažem hvala.

Sameer Vasta

I struggled reading The Friend, not just because it is a novel framed by suicide and loss, but because it is a novel so focused on how writing and reading frame our capacity to cope with grief, and with the tumult of the world around us. There is a beauty to the way Ms. Nunez speaks of various kinds of “friendships” here—with mentors, with colleagues, with students, with the ex-wives of ex-lovers, with the titular friend, the dog Apollo—but there is also an incisive questioning about the nature of life, and its worth in living. This can be discomfiting if you are grappling with those questions yourself; this rumination on friends and grief and life itself is much heavier than its story, and its short length, will indicated.

The Friend: A Novel

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