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scachop 's review for:
The Friend
by Sigrid Nunez
The Friend takes us into the world of a woman living in Manhattan who inherits her best friend and mentor’s dog after he commits suicide. We then witness the meeting of two beings – a literary woman and a Great Dane – who learn to know each other, tame each other, trust each other and rely on each other through life’s difficulties and distresses.
I had trouble getting into this book at first. The tone seems rather pretentious, with countless literary references and judgments about the new generations and the literary world. But as the story unfolds, we come to understand the narrator’s distress and how she is really coping with the loss of her friend; we also see how she ends up clinging to her dog, almost dependently, as he becomes as much a source of comfort as of stress.
The author does an excellent job of conveying the strength of this bond and the importance a dog can have in someone’s life. Throughout the book, the narrator addresses her deceased friend, except in the last chapter, when everything changes and she addresses her dog, reflecting the place the dog has come to occupy in her life and the new grief that lies ahead.
I had trouble getting into this book at first. The tone seems rather pretentious, with countless literary references and judgments about the new generations and the literary world. But as the story unfolds, we come to understand the narrator’s distress and how she is really coping with the loss of her friend; we also see how she ends up clinging to her dog, almost dependently, as he becomes as much a source of comfort as of stress.
The author does an excellent job of conveying the strength of this bond and the importance a dog can have in someone’s life. Throughout the book, the narrator addresses her deceased friend, except in the last chapter, when everything changes and she addresses her dog, reflecting the place the dog has come to occupy in her life and the new grief that lies ahead.