THE FRIEND by Sigrid Nunez

The friend in the title could be a Great Dane named Apollo, or it could be the narrator’s writer friend—a man who has recently committed suicide.  The dog belonged to the writer until the writer’s death, and now our female narrator, a self-proclaimed cat person, reluctantly takes ownership of Apollo, despite the fact that the lease on her tiny apartment prohibits dogs.  She and Apollo bond over their shared grief, and they become virtually inseparable, initially because Apollo becomes destructive on the one occasion where the narrator leaves him alone for too long.  Call me crazy, but I loved the image of the 180-lb dog lying in bed with her on his own pillow.  The narrator also shares with the reader quite a few fascinating opinions about writers, including what they write and why they write.  She herself teaches writing and has abandoned writing a book about human trafficking.  The narrator peppers her musings on writing with a fair amount of cynicism regarding fiction today, especially when quoting her deceased friend.  She offers a scathing criticism of James Patterson’s claim that anyone can write a bestseller and his selling of videos that promise the viewer the ability to do just that, as if he didn’t already have an obscene amount of money.  This book is funny at times, but mostly it is incredibly touching, and I had to remind myself constantly that it was fiction and not a memoir.  One chapter threw me for a loop until I realized that it was basically a detour into magical thinking, ending in sort of a guilt trip.  At least, that’s how I interpreted it.   This is so much more than a dog book, and yet it addresses so beautifully why we accept the constant violence against humans, in movies and in real life, but cannot bear the mistreatment of animals.