The Friend (National Book Award Winner): A Novel [B1310]

2019 PB. Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction. One of the New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Now a Major Motion Picture starring Naomi Watts. "A beautiful book . . . a world of insight into death, grief, art, and love."-Wall Street Journal. "A penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory . . . Nunez has a wry, withering wit."-NPR.

The New York Times bestselling 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.

From recent MIXED Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "If you love a book with a plot, this isn't for you. Written like a letter to a lost friend, this novella speaks to grief, healing, writing's help with processing, and the impact of friendship, both human and canine. While the premise was loss, Nunez still implemented a thought-provoking, and at times funny, deep dive into life, death, and writing, in an almost stream of consciousness format."; "Such a great read with depth and filled with interesting tidbits about being a writer, a professor, and of course a dog owner. What do dogs know? Think? Feel? All housed within recovering from the loss of a loved one who kills himself and wondering why. One of the best novels I've read in recent years."; "This was... Not really my kind of book. It is more disjointed thoughts than a story, rather meta, especially in a chapter towards the end, and I for the most part found it boring. I do not think it is a bad book, it is just not for me."; "Like what you want your best friend to tell you. Close and confiding and wry."