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Sebastian Ritscher
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THE FRIEND

Sigrid Nunez

A gorgeously spare, lucid, 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 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 love, loss, and bereavement and a celebration of the wonder and transforming power of human- canine devotion.

Sigrid Nunez has published six novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, and, most recently, Salvation City. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Among the many publications to which she has contributed are The New York Times, Threepenny Review, Harper's, McSweeney's, Tin House, The Believer, and O: The Oprah Magazine. Her honors and awards include four Pushcart Prizes, a Whiting Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Literature, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Rosenthal Foundation Award. Nunez has taught most recently at Princeton, Columbia, and Boston University and has been a visiting writer or writer in residence at Baruch, Vassar, and the University of California at Irvine, among others. She has also been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and of several other writers' conferences across the country. She lives in New York City.
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Book

Published 2018-02-01 by Riverhead

Book

Published 2018-02-01 by Riverhead

Comments

The Friend, Sigrid Nunez's sneaky gut punch of a novel, is a consummate example of the human-animal tale. The Friend's tone is dry, clear, directwhich is the surest way to carry off this sort of close-up study of anguish and attachment.

The intensity and elegance of THE FRIEND mean two thingsyou cannot put it down and you will cry. In a novel about loss and the loneliness of writing and imagination, Sigrid Nunez creates an irresistible tale of love and an unforgettable Great Dane. A beautiful, beautiful bookthe most original canine love story since My Dog Tulip.

Refreshingly impatient with the conventions of fiction, Nunez is capable of upending our expectations to powerful ends.

Longlisted for National Book Award (Fiction) 2018

Nunez has proved herself a master of psychological acuity.

Nunez deftly turns this potentially mawkish story into a penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory, what it means to be a writer today, and various forms of love and friendship including between people and their pets. All in a taut 200 pages... this nuanced, exceptionally literary novel about devotion is a natural outgrowth of Sempre Susan... Nunez has a wry, withering wit.

Interview with Sigrid Nunez and review The pain of the narrator's bereavement is dealt with through remembering and writing. But the bond she forms with the dog--how they adapt to each other and a world darkened by an aching void--forges this thought-provoking, philosophical story. Ultimately,The Friendponders the meanings of loyalty, love, friendship and a buoyant creative spirit. Read more...

Quietly brilliant and darkly funny, Nunez's (Sempre Susan, 2011, etc.) latest novel finds her on familiar turf with an aggressively unsentimental interrogation of grief, writing, and the human-canine bond. It is a lonely novel: rigorous and stark, so elegantso dismissive of conventional notions of plotit hardly feels like fiction. Breathtaking both in pain and in beauty; a singular book.

A beautiful book.crammed with a world of insight into death, grief, art and love.

This elegant novel explores both rich memories and day-to-day mundanity, reflecting the way that, especially in grief, the past is often more vibrant than the present. Read more...

Shortlisted for the National Book Award 2018 for fiction

An elegant, moving, thoughtful meditation on grief, friendship, healing, and the bonds between humans and dogs.

This is a slow, poignant meditation on grief, rife with pithy literary myths and quotations... Literature nerds, creative writing students, and dog lovers will find this work delightful. Recommended for literary fiction collections.