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Read With Us Selection
Summer 2025

The Friend
by Sigrid Nunez

General Information About the Book

212 pages (paperback)

Published (US) February 2o18, Riverhead Books

Genres: contemporary literary fiction, contemporary autofiction

Setting: New York City

Recognition: National Book Award for Fiction 2018 WINNER

Available in paperback ($10.99 Amazon), Kindle ($9.99), and audio (Audible 1 credit). The book and audiobook are generally available through local libraries and Libby, although availability and wait times vary.

“…a wholly original novel about that sacred bond … starkly honest moments give some texture to an otherwise simple story: woman loses a mentor she might have been in love with and finds solace in a dog … Her unnamed narrator’s journey from solitude to a shared solitude with a dog is moving, for sure, but never in an overly sentimental manner. What makes the book work is the way The Friend reflects on loss, life, and creativity in such a straightforward and bold way.”

— Michele Filgate, The Barnes & Noble Review

Join Us For the Book Discussion on Zoom

Tuesday, September 16, 2025, 7:00 pm Eastern time
Questions will also be posted on our blogs: Highly Reasonable, Carole Knits, Dancing At the Edge.

Please RSVP to receive Zoom link information by emailing Kym (email in sidebar) by September 15, 2025. Thank you.

“You can’t hurry love, as the song goes. You can’t hurry grief either.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend.

Brief Synopsis

From Goodreads

The Friend is 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.

Information About the Author

Bio information from Sigrid Nunez’s website

Sigrid Nunez has published nine novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, The Friend, What Are You Going Through, and, most recently, The Vulnerables. Nunez is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. The Friend, a New York Times bestseller, won the 2018 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize. In France, it was longlisted for the 2019 Prix Femina and named a finalist for the 2019 Prix du Meilleure Livre. It was also a finalist for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award. In 2024, The New York Times listed The Friend among the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. A collection of Nunez’s short fiction will be published in 2026 under the title It Will Come Back to You.

The Friend has been adapted for film by directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee (2024). What Are You Going Through has been adapted for a film directed by Pedro Almodóvar, The Room Next Door (2024).

Nunez’s other honors and awards include a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, the Rome Prize in Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Windham Campbell Prize. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among the journals to which she has contributed are The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, Threepenny Review, Harper’s, and London Review of Books. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including four Pushcart Prize volumes and four anthologies of Asian-American literature. Her story “The Plan” was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2019. Her essay “Life and Story,” originally published in The Sewanee Review, was selected for The Best American Essays 2023. Her work has been published in more than thirty-five countries.

Book Reviews and Author Interviews

Excellent written interview – Sigrid Nunez speaks with Monika Zaleska of Lit Hub (February 23, 2018)

NPR’s Terry Gross speaks with Sigrid Nunez about The Friend – book and movie (37 minute listen)

PBS Books interview with Sigrid Nunez in 2018 (about 14 minutes)

Supplemental Resources

Characters (Book)

The Narrator

Apollo (the dog)

The Friend

Wife Three

Various students

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Movie

The movie version of The Friend was released in April 2025 and stars Naomi Watts and Bill Murray. It runs 2 hours and 3 minutes, and is rated R. The film is “certified fresh” on the Rotten Tomatoes site, with an 85% “tomatometer” approval rating. The Critics Consensus . . .

Leavening its parable of grief with some adorable human-canine bonding, The Friend is a winsome dramedy that’ll resonate with pet owners and just about anyone who’s experienced loss.

The movie is still running in theaters, but has also been released for streaming — BUT . . . it is not free to watch at this point. It is available to purchase (generally about $19.99) or rent (generally about $5.99) on Apple TV, Prime, YouTube, GooglePlay, and Fandango.

Here’s the trailer . . .