A review by elfs29
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Nunez has curated an extremely complex vision of grief, of the way life exists when you're experiencing it and the way the past exists when you consider it in the wake of loss. The vision of a man the narrator may or may not have been in love with, who may or may not have been a good person, is less important in the narrative than the experience of losing him, and her relationship with Apollo instead takes focus - how can she let herself love again when she knows she must lose again? How can she console herself, or know if she is lonely? The consistent quotations and literary references create the image of a woman who doesn't have answers, who has never had answers, and as an aspiring writer, her questions of the ethics and purposes of writing have unsettled me. Every part of this book has made me wonder about something (is that the point of writing?).

Now watching him sleep, I feel a surge of contentment. There follows another, deeper feeling, singular and mysterious, yet at the same time perfectly familiar. I don't know why it takes me a full minute to name it.