Status
Collection
Physical description
Genres
Publication
Description
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.… (more)
User reviews
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.
The writing is elegant, spare, recalling literary entities who were also focused on their pets, finding in them many times more humanity in them than in their regular relationships. The writing is non linear, free flowing thoughts, wandering from their past relationship, to the literary endeavors undertaken by them both, and on to other subjects. Intropsective and melancholy, thoughts turn and twist, the way memories do, and always in the background the ties people have found and loved in their animals. Trivia and insights into animals, their empathy, their understanding, keen sense of smell, the bond forged between them and their human counterparts.
A shorter novel, but I found it fascinating, the way it is pulled together worked for this exceptionally well. We could travel with this young woman as she attempts to come to terms with something unexpected and devastating in her own life. The words, sentences, nothing wasted, we are n her mind, her free flowing thoughts. Her own relationship with the Great Dane and what it comes to mean. This will probably be a book that won't appeal to all, but it did appeal to me. I sometimes sink into these unconventional types of fiction,just float along with the words, and ponder what I'm reading.
ARC from Edelweiss.
———
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
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.
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.
What I
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lovely
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?