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Sigrid Nunez1 book reviewed
The Friend
A Novel
by Sigrid Nunez
LuvemBooks Verdict
Best for: Readers of literary fiction who like their novels thoughtful, talkative, and a little severe — and, unmistakably, anyone who has loved a dog, plus book clubs that enjoy dividing over big questions of suicide, loyalty, art, and obligation.
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- Is it worth reading?
- Yes, with a clear-eyed caveat. It won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction, became a New York Times bestseller, and placed at number 68 on the New York Times' 2024 list of the 100 best books of the 21st century — a reputation LuvemBooks finds earned. The verdict is that it is austere, funny, and quietly devastating, but its essayistic structure and cool, aphoristic tone mean readers wanting narrative momentum or a conventional emotional arc should know what they are picking up.
- Similar books
- Nunez's own earlier novel The Last of Her Kind is the natural next step for readers who want more of her voice. For the same blend of formal experiment and grief, Max Porter's Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Jenny Offill's compact, aphoristic Dept. of Speculation are close cousins. Among titles in our catalogue, Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! shares the interest in art, loss, and what remains after death, while Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day offers another restrained first-person meditation on loyalty and a life examined too late.
- Who should read this?
- Readers of literary fiction who like their novels thoughtful, talkative, and a little severe — and, unmistakably, anyone who has loved a dog, since the human-animal bond lands even for readers indifferent to the literary-world satire. It is also a strong book club pick: short, and genuinely divisive in productive ways on suicide, loyalty, art, and obligation. Readers who want plot, pace, or warmth on demand should look elsewhere.
- Tell me about the adaptation
- The novel has been adapted into a film directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, with Naomi Watts starring as the narrator. The adaptation extends the book's reach well beyond its original literary readership, though the novel's distinctive form — a one-sided address to the dead, full of essayistic digression — is inherently a challenge to translate to the screen, which makes the book the richer starting point.
- Is it a good book club pick?
- Yes — it is nearly an ideal one. The book is short, so no one is buried in homework, and it raises genuine, unresolved questions about suicide, loyalty, art, and obligation to the dead. Critically, it divides opinion in productive ways: some readers find the essayistic digressions and cool tone distancing while others find them bracing, and that split fuels exactly the kind of argument a good discussion needs.
- Where to start with Sigrid Nunez?
- The Friend is actually the natural starting point — it is the novel that reached by far the largest readership, and Nunez has said she was surprised by the scale of the response since her earlier work never found so many readers. From there, readers can go back to earlier novels such as A Feather on the Breath of God or The Last of Her Kind, forward to The Vulnerables, or sideways to Sempre Susan, her memoir about Susan Sontag.
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Age & Reading Level
Recommended age
Adult
Reading level
Adult
2 content notes · who it suits
Content to know about
Best for: Adults — literary fiction built around a suicide, with essayistic arguments about the ethics of student-teacher relationships
Skip if you want plot momentum, a conventional arc, or warmth on demand rather than essayistic literary-world talk.
Editorial Review
Sigrid Nunez's The Friend (Riverhead, 2018) follows an unnamed novelist who inherits Apollo, her dead mentor's Great Dane, after his suicide. The 2018 National Book Award winner and NYT bestseller turns grief into something acerbic, funny, and unsentimental.
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