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The Friend: A Novel
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The Friend: A Novel
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The Friend: A Novel
Audiobook6 hours

The Friend: A Novel

Written by Sigrid Nunez

Narrated by Hillary Huber

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

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.

Editor's Note

2018 National Book Award Winner…

This National Book Award winner is a touching, wry, and witty examination of grief and our connections with animals. An uplifting and intelligent read.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 6, 2018
ISBN9780525528340
Author

Sigrid Nunez

Sigrid Nunez is the New York Times bestselling author of The Friend, winner of the 2018 National Book Award, and of several other novels, including What Are You Going Through and The Last of Her Kind. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Her work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

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Reviews for The Friend

Rating: 3.839788732394366 out of 5 stars
4/5

284 ratings50 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    When a writer’s dear friend of several decades, her former teacher and mentor, a well known author, attempts to commit suicide, the results are devastating for her. Her grief seems unrelenting. When offered the opportunity to care for his rather large dog, she refuses at first, but then she relents, even though her lease specifically states no dogs allowed! The dog’s presence will make her feel her friend is still with her, and his absence will be less complete.Although we never learn the names of the characters, except for Apollo, the Harlequin Dane, we know many of them are actively involved in the world of words. The story is told in the first person as the author relates her feelings regarding writing, teaching, suicide, sex slaves, abusive male behavior, animal relationships and human relationships. From the beginning, it feels like a treatise on several progressive principles, on the right to take one’s own life, on women’s rights and women’s needs, on women’s behavior and women’s struggles and on men’s toxicity regarding their thoughts on and treatment of women. It is a perfect presentation of the current political themes being publicized and stressed in today’s environment. Like so many books today, liberal principles were out front. The men are portrayed practically as serial abusers, and the women are the unwilling, or sometimes, willingly, abused participants.The book, in great detail, lays out how the author deals with her loss through her relationship with her friend’s dog, now in need of an owner, and this relationship is also compared to the devoted and sometimes loyal relationship of human to human, as well. Can a dog be a kind of substitute spouse! Although the language felt unnecessarily crude, at times, the book is thoughtful and decisive in its clear presentation of relationships and the reactions to the loss of same. It is told well, and at times, the reader may feel it is more like a memoir than a novel. In essence, this book is about loss, the immediate and delayed reactions to it, the grieving process, the eventual adjustment to it, and the recovery. The main character, the grieving author, teaches journaling. Essentially, this book is her story, her journal. She is relating it to the reader. The journey she relates will take the reader into her most personal moments. Her fairly relaxed, cavalier attitude towards life and its rules may appear in contradiction to her overwhelming feelings of loss, at times. The surprising similarities and coincidences concerning our relationship with humans and animals will make the reader think or raise an eyebrow in wonder, at times.What is the main purpose of the novel? Is it about friendship, loss, grief, relationships, love, devotion, fidelity, abuse? Is it about changing times, politics? What is the main character’s ultimate purpose? We do not discover much until the end. There are a dozen parts to this story, and they all come together in the end, in a surprising reveal.Can an animal take the place of a human in someone’s life? Is it a positive or negative quality if a book seems more real than the fiction it was meant to be? Is the issue of support animals being abused for the right reasons, or is it wrong no matter what? Can a dog have human thoughts and feelings? Are writers privileged, and therefore, are they sometimes white supremacists? Should taking one’s life be considered a bad thing or a choice? Do we have a right to make that choice over living or dying? In the end, does the author conclude that some writers, largely the young, new students, have become intolerant to new ideas; are they too politically correct and/too political? Are students unwilling to hear thoughts they disagree with so they can come to terms with them? Have novels become politicized? Are they no longer about anything but social issues?There is added interest in this novel as quotes from renowned authors and philosophers, perhaps not always well known or popular, are provided to illustrate the author’s feelings. The narrator of the audio reads it in what feels like a somewhat flat, dead-pan manner which is perfect for this novel because it neither gives the reveal away nor does it even hint at it until the final moment when the truth is told. Is the author writing a kind of memoir or a novel about her friend? The reader will wonder, what is real, what is not?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    No, I don't want this book to be over! I want to be there at the end with them and keep turning the page. "The Friend" deals with suicide, friendship, dogs (big ones that smell!), grief, and yet, I'm smiling. And there's Part 11. I had to go back and read it again once I was done with the book. Such an interesting angle. Love, love, love.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    NYT When “The Friend” came out in February, Nunez and her publisher, Riverhead, weren’t expecting a best-seller. Riverhead ordered a first printing of 10,500.Still, Sarah McGrath, Nunez’s editor, hoped the book would resonate with animal lovers and draw a bigger audience than her earlier books.“She’s writing about grief and loss and death and relationships, these are serious earnest subjects, yet she’s doing it with humor, and that’s such a hard thing to achieve,” she said. “For a book that is so wise and rich with literary allusions, it’s actually very accessible, and I did think this was a book that could help her find her readers.”
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This was so awful that I actually googled the National Book Awards to see what the ever-loving-blue-eyed-heck the criteria for winning were. I seriously wondered if this were an award that "sounded" like a legit one, but was actually something Ms. Nunez created and then awarded to herself. What I found was this criticism of the NBA: "...the fiction award has become a Newbery Medal for adults: Good for you whether you like it or not. ...the impression has arisen that already-successful titles are automatically sidelined in favor of books that the judges feel deserve an extra boost of attention. the nominated books [often] exhibit qualities – a poetic prose style, elliptical or fragmented storytelling – that either don't matter much to nonprofessional readers, or even put them off....the NBA has become irrelevant to average readers and of more interest to professional writers..."the National Book Awards [are] known for this sort of thing. They're awards for insiders."YES! "The Friend" is a perfect example of "Awards For Insiders". A chance for them to form a circle and--um--pat each other on the back.The book is self-absorbed navel-gazing from beginning to --- whatever you would call the final page. So unbearably pretentious! I'm smacking myself on the forehead repeatedly, and mumbling, "Why? Why? WHY didn't I listen to my instincts and ditch this thing earlier?" I combined (1) the hope that maybe it would have something to do with the dog (and not just her egocentric musings about how the dog's presence affects HER), with (2) the book award winner stamp on the cover--surely eventually this would become worth reading, wouldn't it?? Spoiler Alert: No. Thank goodness for the public library!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A very interesting book--one I admired more than loved. For the first two-thirds of the book, I was ambivalent and often bored. One can only take so many quotes about writing before they get old. For the last third, I was hooked. I understand why it would receive the National Book Award. I'm embarrassed to give it only three stars, but there you go.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved this book. The friend was the narrator's friend who bequeathed his Great Dane to her after his suicide. The great charm of the book is that the friend, addressed in the second person, gradually becomes the dog. It was written so personally I had to check to see if it was a memoir. Lovely writing, lovely dog.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Overall, I found this book to be overwhelmingly sad - the narrator is struggling to come to terms with the suicide of her mentor, from whom she has inherited a dog. She seeks to treat the animal's depression, while ignoring her own and muses constantly on the theme of writing. In fact, you could almost call this novel a treatise on contemporary writing. Both the narrator and her mentor are writers and teachers with a lot to say on the subject. While I found some pieces interesting, the overall sense of gloom and depression (note: this atmosphere is not necessary to the subject; see The Bell Jar) weighed down this book in a way that made me want the characters to break free of their own emotional constraints. Alas, they don't.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A unique and thought provoking book that covers diverse topics like friendship, suicide, pet ownership and the craft of writing. The signature event is that when a long time friend of the narrator (an author) passes away leaving her his Great Dane and she lives in a small apartment in New York City. There are lots of interesting quotes from a bevy of famous authors and other people all worth pondering. I really loved this book and can see why it received all the acclaim that it did.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this to be a complex book and I can't say that I understood all of it, or how it all fitted together, but nonetheless it somehow worked pretty well. OK, some of the sections about writers and what they have thought and said seemed a little too much. The dog in this story is certainly not the focus, but it does help to have a dog orientation to appreciate the book most. The book seems to me to be almost a kind of meditation on death, dying, friendship and grief. A quick read, but it seemed complete and full enough.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Friend tells the story of a middle-aged author and creative writing teacher who is mourning the loss of her mentor and oldest friend. The deceased, himself a literature professor, recently committed suicide but has left no explanation for what seems to be an impulsive act. Beyond having to cope with that loss, the writer has also inherited her friend’s massive and aging Great Dane, despite the fact that her tiny rent-controlled apartment does not allow pets. How she and the dog handle their respective grieving processes and learn to get on with their lives together forms the basic plot of this brief novella.From that description, it should be clear that these fictional elements provide no real dramatic tension and barely amount to much more than an extended short story. To compensate, Sigrid Nunez pads the rest of the book with considerable philosophical musings on sundry topics such as: the sexual tension between professors and students, the psychology and physiology of how pets grieve, famous authors ruminating on the debilitating and lonely act of writing, an examination of the human trafficking business, how the relationship between writers and readers has changed in the age of technology, the therapeutic nature of reading to animals, and so forth.Some of these digressions were stimulating and engaging, particularly when Nunez flexed her almost encyclopedic command of literary references. Still, I came away from The Friend with a vaguely cynical view of the author’s sense of what it means to grieve. I did not understand many of the main character’s actions in the aftermath of the suicide, especially in her relationship with the dog. Further, the lengthy chapter near the end in which she imagines an alternative ending for her mentor’s death seemed like a false note, as well as a device deployed much more effectively elsewhere (e.g., Ian McEwan’s Atonement). So, while generally well crafted, this book was not an especially enjoyable or memorable experience for me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    How I ended up reading a grief novel is beyond me. I didn’t know the subject matter when I saw it had won the National Book Award and decided to read it. A woman loses a good friend to suicide and ends up having to care for his aging Great Dane even though she has a tiny rent controlled apartment in New York City. So although I referred to it as a grief novel it’s also about the bonding between this woman and dog as they both grieve for the friend they both loved. The book is filled with tender poignant moments as the woman, who is a creative writing teacher, thinks about her past with her friend and takes on the daunting task of caring for this enormous animal. Nunez mentions so many books and authors that I lost track, which, of course, adds to the pleasure of this book. Absolutely wonderful.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    When a good, longtime friend and colleague commits suicide, "The Friend" is asked to take in his great dane. The woman is grieving the loss of her friend and the dog becomes something of a substitute. There is a great deal of speculation about what a dog might think and feel. Too much for me! But there are also interesting reflections on male/female friendship, suicide, and the art of writing. Well written and frank in style, but, even though this is a short novel, I had to push my way through.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is an interesting book. A woman's dear friend dies, leaving her a bequest of his elderly Great Dane. The protagonist is the narrator. Unfortunately, the plethora of tangential lines of philosophical, psychological and historical quotes and ponderings diminished my enjoyment of the book. The themes are grief and the love one can feel for an animal.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    At times, fiction has such a power over me, this is one of those times. I was moved by this clever, insightful, and tender book. The author brings so much to the table. The book centers on a writer’s dear friend and mentor who has committed suicide. This surviving woman ends up taking care of the dead man's massive Great Dane, in her tiny Manhattan apartment. However, is in much more than that. There are gems of knowledge about authors, the literary world, and so much more, sprinkled throughout the novel. This woman looks and ponders what suicide means for everyone around her late friend. The book doesn’t wax philosophically, but it briefly touches on points of view, on facts, that keeps your mind active. Much is written about the written word, what it means to the writer, the reader, and the society in general. Toward the book’s end, a new fold of the story comes into play that changes things, but does it really? Since I recently rediscovered the significance of “the perfect place to die,” the Aokigahara Forest at the foot of Mount Fuji, I continually come across it. With this book centered on a suicide, and the author loving to drop knowledge on her readers, it was bound to come up in this novel, as it surely did. And, while I’m normally not that taken with stories that feature animals, the role played by this one was much bigger than simply being a massive beast in a 500 square foot apartment. The dog is central to the story line, and is a well-developed character. The scope of the book is a most thoughtful pondering of life, grieving, writing, relationships, and more. It handles each intelligently, in a crisp, clear, and concise style that constantly impressed this reader.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Nunez is what one could call "a writer's writer" - there's a lot of technique going on in this book, from the frame stories to the pseudo nonfiction essay style a lot of it takes on, and she delves into writerly themes quite a bit (the relationship between authors and readers, between novelists and the real life people who inspire them, literary culture, etc).Really all of that is a bonus, though, on top of the emotional core to the novel: the story of a woman and her dog, both mourning a lost friend. The dog's mourning is without judgment (or understanding), while the woman's is complicated by resentments and an understanding that loving someone doesn't mean erasing their flaws or the harm they do.I really loved this. I'm going to be thinking back on it a lot.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    For the Tournament of Books Summer Reading Challenge 2018.———This novel is about a woman--early middle aged? Or maybe 30ish? Single, writing teacher, who lives in a small (NY?) apartment. Her former teacher, mentor, and very good friend has committed suicide. His third wife gifts the unnamed narrator his dog. A great dane with the beginnings of arthritis.This book is her ruminations on the dog, her grief, the grief of dogs, writings about dogs, writings about the grief of dogs, her worry about the dog, life with the dog, and why her friend did this thing to his friends and family. Somewhat stream of consciousness, I just didn't find it very interesting. Just a total miss for me. I can see how someone else might like it. I am also not a dog person.I did learn about the book "My Dog Tulip", which I will NOT be reading based on the narrator's description of it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Quite the different book. We hear the narrator's stream of consciousness. I usually don't like that much but I did like it in this book. Lot's of literary references and in depth tidbits of information on certain subjects (are they true)--for examples various stories about dogs waiting for their owners after their owners death. But I need someone to explain chapter 11 to me--maybe I get it. Is this how the narrator wanted the book to go? It confused me because I thought everything I just read wasn't true--but then chapter 12 makes it seem like this was just a little interlude. Was it necessary for this to be such a long chapter?Anyway--it's worth a read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    In this novel, an unnamed creative writing teacher mourns the loss of her dear friend, an author and professor. She takes in the author's Great Dane, Apollo, despite living in a small Manhattan apartment where dogs are not allowed. As she and the dog mourn the loss of the author, she shares memories of him, as well as her observations and shares quotes about dogs, teaching, writing and life in New York City.Told in a series of brief paragraphs and vignettes, The Friend never really got underway for me. Its a slender novel, and the brief segments each seemed unconnected with the ones on either side. There's a section where the novel reflects on its own construction that was interesting, but ultimately not enough to redeem the rest of it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this to be cool to the touch in a way that didn't quite do justice to its subjects—grief, literature, male-female friendship, and the love of a good dog. It seemed more like an exercise than a novel, and all the literary references felt distancing, more like name-dropping, than contextual—I think because there were just too many. This was a good book at heart that tried to be too many things, and they were all important enough things to merit their own focus. There were parts that had some teeth, though I wonder how much of that is personal—Nunez's musings on what an old dog in pain might feel and how much they might communicate that hit hard because I have an old dog whom I know to be in some degree of pain. But ultimately it was a bit dissatisfying, and touched me less than I would have imagined. Still, no regrets for having read it, and I did appreciate sentiments like this:Your whole house smells of dog, says someone who comes to visit. I say I'll take care of it. Which I do by never inviting that person to visit again.I think also it's just a matter of the Renate Adleresque tone not doing it for me. It doesn't when Renate Adler does, either.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    n i c e. O u t s t a n d i n g
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Loved the book and author references but this just wasn’t as great as I expected.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hearing this book read melted my heart. I overlooked the hard cover of this book numerous times despite its National Book Award status. But when I started listening, I was mesmerized by the use of language. But beyond the words, the author’s message spoke volumes. She expressed the feeling so many dog owners have beautifully: taking a cab home to get there quicker to see the dog you missed all day. Talking to your dog daily but wishing you knew how he really felt. Changing almost everything about your comfortable life to accommodate your dog. Stressing about his problems coping with aging and feeling the anxiety about his death even before it happens. And she sprinkled the book with so many words of wisdom about writing and how self publishing had affected publishing. Her insights on reading fiction struck a chord: prolific readers now anxious because so often finishing a novel lost its thrill. I felt like I was chatting with my friend and we had so much in common, especially our passion for books and dogs. Brilliant!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Beautiful story. Death, love, and life. All wonderfully and masterfully woven together!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not a feel good but I did enjoy it and the reader.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Nunez is a direct, precise writer who tells this story beautifully. A woman is forced to take the dog of a mentor of hers who committed suicide. She cares for the dog dearly and shows that the dog returns her feelings. they both are grieving and grieve together. their is also much in this book about the literary world and the back stabbing that goes on there. this also makes nunez a daring writer. i do not usually read or care for books about animals, but this one was overly thoughtful and easy to empathize with.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A woman agrees to take care of the unwanted puppy that her longtime closest friend and mentor has left behind after passing away unexpectedly. Her own struggle with loss is made more difficult by the dog's quiet suffering—a large Great Dane frightened by the mysterious disappearance of its owner—and the prospect of eviction she is facing because pets are not allowed in her apartment complex.The woman will not be separated from the dog, except for limited periods of time, which worries others who fear that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking or worse. She is increasingly preoccupied with the dog's care and seems to be on the verge of disintegrating due to her isolation from the outside world and her determination to understand the dog's heart and intellect. While difficulties abound for both her and the dog, each of them will experience rich and unexpected benefits.While the description of the novel highlights the events, it does not tell the whole story. The most important aspect for me was the literary sensibility of the narrator - a narrator who is a writer. This was evidenced both by multiple literary references that provided a deeper meaning for the story and observations on the importance of reading. More significantly, this had special meaning for me based on my own shared experience of reading the texts that she referenced. Her observations about writing based on reading Flannery O'Connor, Nabokov, and other authors were astute and beautifully blended into the narrative. The result of these references added power to the narrative and left this reader ready to reread the novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a book I chose because it won the National Book Award. I knew that it involved grieving and dealing with a Great Dane dog that the deceased(suicide) left to the narrator. Only the dog Apollo is named in this 200 page book. It is done in the first person and covers a wide range of topics. It is especially good when talking about the process of writing, authors egos, and fiction versus non-fiction. There was less interaction with the dog then I thought theret would be but enough for you to see how the bond between the narrator(an author) develops. As both an avid reader and a dog person, I appreciated the book. Not sure how I would have felt that way if it was any longer. A worthwhile read but not one I would have picked as a National Book Award winner. Not for everyone but if you enjoy reading, writing, and dogs then this is a worthwhile read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5 *’s. Well written, entertaining, about at least some important things – grief and love – but there is a lightness to this novel. The dog is nice and I liked all the advice and quotations about writing and the occasional humorous looks at writing students that were either deprecation of sophomores or Generation Z. But perhaps because it was written as a journal, and since there is no real propulsion so rather than seeing characters' grief in a story, I felt like I was being told about it, I will have to withhold my vote for the National Book Award until I’ve read everything else on the long list.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A delicate 4 stars. I don't think I'm a full-fledged Nunez convert (although to be one is rather en vogue at present), but this is certainly an insightful, fine, intelligent short novel.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is a philosophical look at writing. And life. And death. And loneliness. And a grieving doggo.

    Remove the cartoonish dust jacket. The book itself has a much nicer embossed dog on the cover.