The Friend: A Novel

A beautiful book about grief, love, friendship, animals, and writing. One of the best books I have read this year, will want to read it agsin.

I'm not given to writing reviews, but I have to make an exception this time. As is often the case, there's good news and bad.First, the bad. The publishers deserve the firing squad, except since they DID have the good sense to publish the book, they get one star (and the author loses one). This is not a young adult book or one destined to be a best-seller, it's a book for lovers of fiction and the art and craft of writing it. So why, since most of its readers will be individuals wearing glasses, publish it in a font so small and with contrast so weak that some sort of magnification may well prove necessary? They'll have a chance, when preparing the paperback edition, to do better, and I'm writing this solely to encourage them to do that: MAKE IT READABLE.Second, the good. This is an important book. The author has created something original and, by its end, revelatory of how fiction comes to be - indeed, of what fiction IS. The prose style is dry, never poetic. (It's not 'academic' dry, it's 'journalistic' dry.) The plot is slight, and the digressions are many. But it's not - not ever - dull; there's not a wasted word in it. The pace is slow, but it's too interesting to put down. 3/4 of the way through, the author takes the reader on a detour that I was pretty sure was going to turn out to have been a bad idea. It wasn't; she knew exactly what she was doing. It turns out she's a fisherman (fisherperson?) who has been quietly letting out her nets all along, and when she hauls them in, her catch is bountiful. I'm impressed enough with "The Friend" that I'm changing the syllabus for a seminar I'll teach next fall, replacing a tried and true novel with this one, because it's such fine work. Brava, Signora Nunez!Five stars for the author - minus one for the publisher. PLEASE do better with the next edition; this is an important book!

Whatever genre you consider this book to be - novel, memoir, meditation - you are right. Ms. Nunez has created a beautiful book that explores love and the relationships between friends, humans and animals, along with the great grief we experience when faced with the loss of a loved one. She also examines the teaching of writing, particularly that of her deceased mentor who has recently taken his own life.Ms. Nunez has written many books and her biography of Susan Sontag is stellar. In my opinion, however, this is her strongest and most personal work despite the whole book progressing with hardly a human's name mentioned. The reader is privy to the name of Appollo, the dog left in Ms. Nunez's care after her friend commits suicide. Appollo is a Great Dane, majestic and always a reminder of the author's friend and mentor, What does it mean to have a relationship with an animal, especially a dog, that is notably needy of human care and affection. Is it usual to anthropomorphize one's relationship with an animal, to see oneself as parent or family member? Ms. Nunez sees and feels Appollo as part of her life and through him, comes to find and explore a deep and satisfying connection to her dead friend.The teaching of writing has changed much since the time Ms. Nunez's mentor was a professor. He was a lady's man, attractive and charismatic, boldly having affair after affair with his students and colleagues. With the #me too movement, none of this would be possible yet, in Ms. Nunez's words, it enriched her friend's world and that of the students who felt lucky enough to be chosen by him. Even Ms. Nunez, in her own way, has been in love with him while loving him Platonically as well.Read this book. If it's in your TBR stack, move it to the top. If you don't have it, buy it now. It is one of a kind - like a snowflake or a heart beat.

Ms Nunez is a fine writer. This is a book about writing, writers, the challenges of being a writer, teaching writing, and other similar concepts. Contrary to what I thought when I bought it, it is *not* a book about how caring for animals can be magical for both parties. I saw the preview for the upcoming movie (with Naomi Watts and Bill Murray and a big Great Dane),and assumed it had been closely based on the book. So: NO. It’s not.I didn’t like it much, but the author really is good, organized, erudite, honest, skillful. It’s a little bit about feminism. It’s a lot about the neuroses that being a writer seems to engender.So now you know.