You were wearing your brown vintage bomber jacket, the one that was too tightand looked only better on you for thatand your hair was dark and thick and long. The book concerns an unnamed novelist who adopts a Great Dane that belonged to a deceased friend and mentor. I thought of the women whod cried themselves blind. The Friend is a novel by the American writer Sigrid Nunez published by Riverhead Books in 2018. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.Įlegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion. I kept blinking, but my eyes wouldnt clear. 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. The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez, Virago, RRP8.99, 214 pages Join our online book group on Facebook at FTBooksCafe. 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.

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.

When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Sigrid Nunez has published seven novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, Salvation City, and, most recently, The Friend.She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog. Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend (Riverhead Books, 2018) offers another approach to the use of you: direct address as a focal point for monologue.

The friend sigrid