A review by casskrug
What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez

4.5

i’ve been seeing a lot of praise for this book recently but was reluctant to pick it up because i didn’t love nunez’s novel the friend. so glad i decided to start it after having it on my shelf for years now - it was a really enjoyable read!

nunez is almost doing something reminiscent of the outline trilogy with this book. a lot of the novel is made up of conversations with and stories about people other than our narrator, who is quite passive, and we get a sense of who she is through her relaying of these interactions. the subject matter is very existential, dealing with the climate crisis, politics, ethics, and the nature of the relationships we forge in modern times.

where this novel differs from the outline, and what i really appreciated about it, were the stakes introduced at the halfway point of the book, drawing the narrator and reader into a rekindled friendship with a major favor (for lack of a better term) at its center. that friendship was rendered so tenderly and the questions of illness and death that it explored were very thought provoking. it added a sende of purpose to the book and grounded it, so that it didn’t feel like a bunch of random conversations cobbled together.

i also found the writing style to be engaging. funny at times, but still giving serious weight to the serious topics discussed. this book feels really poignant to our times, and even though it asks difficult questions, it was something of a comfort to me while i read it. we are all really just trying to figure things out.

really excited about the prospect of reading more of sigrid nunez’s work after my experience with this!