Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Excerpt from The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Readalikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • First Published:
  • Feb 6, 2018, 224 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Feb 2019, 224 pages
  • Rate this book

About this Book

Print Excerpt


The mother's old fur coat is the kind of detail writing teachers like to point out to students, one of those telling details—like how Simenon's daughter got her gun—that are found in abundance in life but are mostly absent from student fiction.

The poet got into her car, a vintage 1967 tomato-red Cougar, and turned on the ignition.


In the first writing course I ever taught, after I'd emphasized the importance of detail, a student raised his hand and said, I totally disagree. If you want a lot of details, you should watch television.

A comment I would come to see was not really as dumb as it seemed.

The same student also accused me (his words were writers like you) of trying to scare other people by making writing seem much harder than it was.

Why would we want to do that? I asked.

Oh come on, he said. Isn't it obvious? The pie is only so large.


My own first writing teacher used to tell her students that if there was anything else they could do with their lives instead of becoming writers, any other profession, they should do it.


Last night, in the Union Square station, a man was playing "La Vie en Rose" on a flute, molto giocoso. Lately I've become vulnerable to earworms, and sure enough the song, in the flutist's peppy rendition, has been pestering me all day. They say the way to get rid of an earworm is to listen a couple of times to the whole song through. I listened to the most famous version, by Edith Piaf, of course, who wrote the lyrics and first performed the song in 1945. Now it's the Little Sparrow's strange, bleating, soul-of-France voice that won't stop.

Also in the Union Square station, a man with a sign: Homeless Toothless Diabethee. That's a good one, a commuter said as he tossed change into the man's paper cup.

Excerpted from The Friend by Sigrid Nunez. Copyright © 2018 by Sigrid Nunez. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $0 for 0 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Based on the author’s family story, comes an extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters’ escape from Taiwan.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Original Daughter
    by Jemimah Wei

    A dazzling debut by Jemimah Wei about ambition, sisterhood, and family bonds in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

  • Book Jacket

    Serial Killer Games
    by Kate Posey

    A morbidly funny and emotionally resonant novel about the ways life—and love—can sneak up on us (no matter how much pepper spray we carry).

  • Book Jacket

    Awake in the Floating City
    by Susanna Kwan

    A debut novel about an artist and a 130-year-old woman bound by love and memory in a future, flooded San Francisco.

  • Book Jacket

    Ginseng Roots
    by Craig Thompson

    A new graphic memoir from the author of Blankets and Habibi about class, childhood labor, and Wisconsin’s ginseng industry.

Who Said...

There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

B W M in H M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.