Reviews with content warning for Suicide - The Friend

I thought this was a book about a dog... Man what the hell 🤦🏻
I got to the sex trafficking part and gave up.
I really enjoyed the writing style, but the content of the book feels indulgent and unnecessarily heavy at times

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kell_xavi's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

I sought a story of about animal companionship, understanding of a dog’s world alongside a human one. More than anticipated, this is a book about grieving a man: one the narrator has known and loved for many years, but whose bigotry and sexist narcissism are the prevailing qualities that come across in description. The narrator seems to comprehend this, without contemplating it, of the currents of her grief; instead, she turns to Apollo the Great Dane, and grows a new love from the disquiet come over her.

I enjoyed many of the literary connections Nunez and the narrator, herself a writer and professor, make. I don’t tend to pick up writing about writing, but the perspective of an older woman, well-read and used to both capturing her feelings and parsing them through writing (hers, other authors’), made sense here as an opening. Grief, love, pets, ownership, devotion, attention, death: these are all subjects that are heavily present in literature and in our lives. This short novel is both a simple one as it repeats, mirrors them, and one that stirs and enriches the reader. The woman and the dog both dedicated to another, the woman and man both in authority, the reflection of the woman on each role and companion also a flicker of light on herself. At the same time, this continues to be a story of a friendship between human and dog, one that epitomizes the Rilke quote about love being two solitudes that greet each other.

At the close of this novel, I wanted it to continue. There were many parts, however, that I didn’t enjoy. There’s a grossness to both men and animals, there’s a sustained apology for it, that I find it difficult to approach. It was more that I wanted The Friend to be different, more of some parts and less of others.

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kellymcmanus's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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