The Friend

Once in a while you read the right book at the right time. This book was it for me. A woman who is a writer is mourning the suicide of her closest friend, another writer. The dead man's third wife asks the narrator to take her husband's dog, a Great Dane that she never wanted and doesn't connect with. The dog also appears to be grieving. The woman and the dog, Apollo, make their way together in her tiny apartment in a building that doesn't allow pets.

This is not a sentimental story about how dogs heal our griefs with their love. For one thing, Great Danes have a short lifespan of only 5-7 years, and Apollo is already at least 5 years old. We know more death and grief are in store for the narrator. Also, Apollo is feeling the grief of his human's loss too. He needs quite a lot of care himself.

It IS a quiet story about coping with the shock and loss of suicide. It's also about writers and whether writing is an honorable vocation. It's very readable, and I loved it.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot. From beginning to end it kept me engaged in the story and that's because of the way it's presented. Through what seemed to be letters written by the protagonist is that we get to know the story. This makes it especially interesting because we not only get to read about the dog, but about the thoughts and vague ideas that go through the mind of our protagonist.

It's a good story about mourning and bereavement. It depicts the impact the loss of someone close has not only on us humans, but on dogs as well. Also, it walks us through the connection a person can create with a pet and the emotion and sentiment that goes into it.

I've always been a sucker for dogs, so the premise had me drooling over it, and I believe it delivered, but maybe not as greatly as I had expected.
Really good book that I would recommend to many people, just not life changing or anything like that.

Maybe not a great idea to read two of her works in quick succession. Similar narrator: middle-aged academic woman with poor boundary assertion and little definition of her Self. Thoughtful explorations of suicide and loneliness. Intermittent sublime vignettes offering observations of humans in our element.There were parts I loved... but too many other parts I just found tedious or unsatisfying. Her friendship with the Friend, I never understood at all: both he and she are too hazily drawn for me to feel their chemistry. I know that's not the point, that we should just take it for granted, which I of course did at the beginning; but as the book progressed I found myself understanding their relationship less and less, and this distanced me from the narrative.What really tested me was all the discussion of writing, and writers, and writing advice, and students of writing, and O.M.G. Sure, all of us love nothing better than to spend hours gazing at our navels in deep fascination. (I mean, I assume I‘m not the only one who occupies long weekends doing so... right?) We. Just. Don't. Share. It. (Okay, except for this reeeeeeally amazing piece of lint I found one day - read about it in my bestselling trilogy). All the sections on writing, and the obviously-not-a-twist near the end, and the second-person switch in the last chapter, it was too meta for me. And I fully accept that as my problem, I'm not smart or clever enough. (Or, giggle, intellectual enough. Inside joke, sorry. Hi, S.!)I was also dissatisfied with the way suicide was treated, but that's quite likely because she did such a phenomenal thoughtful job in [b:What Are You Going Through 53812638 What Are You Going Through Sigrid Nunez https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1591241818l/53812638.SY75.jpg 74855144] which I read before this one. Since WAYGT is a later work, I will assume she has matured. Still, having read them out of order, I felt disappointed in her earlier work. (Note to readers: no, there is no narrative connection whatsoever between the books. The only connection is authorial growth.)Finally, a brief note about my biases: it pains me to imagine active working dogs living in big-city apartments. I tried to accept that part of the story with love and patience. I do not think that aspect was a strong factor in my rating—I think the factors above were by far my major gripes—but you and I are well acquainted with Feynman's First Principle.

An interesting novella- no real plot but a fantastic character study. I thought it skated around some topics, and the death of the friend seems like it will be a major topic but ebbs and flows. I liked it all and thought those choices seemed intentional, but I didn't feel a hugely strong connection. Overall really strong writing though.

Well-written, never boring, and sometimes moving. Simultaneously very heavy and not quite substantial. The deliberately fragmented presentation allows the nameless narrator to reflect widely on writing, books, grief, friendship, death, and dogs. Like her, the book is smart but all over the place, lacking focus and closure. My first book by Nunez and though I didn't totally love it, I was impressed by her skill.

This is a book about grief and about writing. It reads like a novel, and feels like a memoir, and the lines blur even more when the protagonist behind the protagonist mentions that she's giving a class on fiction as autobiography. I loved the writing style, it was very fluid and seamlessly blend between plot elements and ruminations on writing, writers and death. Going from the grief and depression of dogs to a deep friendship that got sex out of the way early, to meditations on suicide to describing the plot of the movie Lilja 4-ever.

At the heart of it all, a first forced cohabition of dog and human that quickly turns into touching yet never soppy love story, where the lines blur of who's there to cure the other's grief. Or as Rilke says, “two solitudes which border, protect, and greet each other.”

4.5
I have now googled pictures of great danes and am frightened by their size

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.