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Summary and Reviews of The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez
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  • First Published:
  • Feb 6, 2018, 224 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Feb 2019, 224 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog.

When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.

While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.

Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.

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    National Book Awards
    2018

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Nunez achieves a beautiful feat – she tells a rich and satisfying story through short vignettes, each seemingly about a very small topic. As a whole, they make up an intricate tapestry of a complicated inner life, but break them apart and you have many fully formed narratives, each with a heart of its own. Put down the book after finishing a short, page-long piece and you will have enough to think about for the rest of the day. How many books can say the same?..continued

Full Review (427 words)

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(Reviewed by Natalie Vaynberg).

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Beyond the Book



The Origins of Human-Canine Friendship

Sigrid Nunez's The Friend reminds us of the power and beauty of the human-canine friendship. Many of us have witnessed the relationship first-hand – our dogs "listen" to us, they comfort us when we are sad and they are the first to greet us when we come home – but where and when did it originate? How did the gray wolf become "man's best friend"?

Early DomesticationSurprisingly, this is a highly contentious question, still raising hackles and stirring up arguments across the global geneticist community.

For many years, there were two dominant theories on dog domestication – one is passive, wolves simply came around human encampments to feed off of scraps and stayed around, domesticating themselves. The other theory suggests ...

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