The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

Amy    

fiction

In The Friend, the unnamed narrator’s best friend has just committed suicide and she spends the novel discussing the fallout from his death as well as their histories. Written in first and second person, the narrator is addressing her comments to her dead friend for most of the novel.  Through her monologue, she explains their relationship, their individual life situations, and their stories.  At about the 1/6 mark, she is given this friend’s dog after his death.  After this, the main focal points of the novel are about pet ownership in general and professional writers/writing.  This is unfortunate since I was bored with these topics before the novel’s halfway mark.  I only kept reading because this was a book club selection. In the very last part of the novel, the narrator addresses her comments to the dog instead of the friend.

I never would have read this book if it weren’t for book club because I have a policy of avoiding "animal books" (and movies).  This one, while not strictly a book about the dog, had the dog as the sole cover subject which made me dread reading it.  It was funny when the book, itself, addressed the very reason I avoid animal books--something bad always happens to the animal.  As it turns out, spoiler alert--nothing bad happened to this dog!  My fear in this regard was unfounded! 

Interestingly, the dog, Apollo, is the only character whose name is provided during the entire novel (and the author also points out this fact near the end but she should have felt that her readers were wise enough to figure that out) other than names that are provided anecdotally.  Sigrid Nunez includes a lot of quotes as anecdotes and proof of her points throughout the story telling. I don’t care for this style of writing.  I’m not a “quote person” (haha--no pun intended)—especially this large volume of quotes.  To me, quotes make specific points and should be used sparingly.  Nunez, obviously, has a different philosophy on the matter and seems to use them so often that the novel starts to feel like a research paper with citations.  This barrage of quotes serves to break up the flow of the narrative and bugged me while I was listening to the audiobook.

The narrator, Hillary Huber, while clear to understand and not a bad voice actor during the tender parts, tended to speak very slowly and a bit too robotically for much of the narrative.  She was finally able to shine near the end of the novel when there was an actual discussion between two characters that is longer than a few sentences.  This allowed Huber to do some voice acting! However, the robotic narrative for most of the novel was annoying so I give her a B+.