Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them. Coping with the suicide of the writer's friend, both Apollo and the narrator brave the inexplicability of death, grief, and love. 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. A postmodern exploration of the role of writing in our contemporary political climate, Sigrid Nunez's The Friend tells the story of an unlikely friendship between an unnamed writer and a dog named Apollo. 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. 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. When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind.
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