The Friend BOOK REVIEW

• Date Published:
  2018
• Length:
  224 pages—Listening Time: 5 hours 59 minutes
• Genre:
  Fiction
• Setting:
  Present day, Manhattan, New York
• Awards
  National Book Award Winner Fiction 2018; Dublin Literary Award Shortlist 2020; Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award Foreign Literature 2021; BookTube Prize Octofinalist Fiction 2019; Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize Finalist 2019; NPR: Books We Love 2018; The New York Times Notable Books of the Year Fiction 2018; Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Fiction to Get Your Book Club Talking 2018; Los Angeles Public Library Best of the Year Fiction 2018; New York Public Library Best Books: For Adults Fiction 2018; Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults 2018; SJPL's Staff Best Reads of the Year 2025; BuzzFeed Best Books Fiction 2018; New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century; 50 Books to Read Before You’re 50
• Languages:
  Bosnian, Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Galician, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese (Portugal)
• Sensitive Aspects:
  Suicide and suicidal ideation, grief and bereavement, depression and emotional trauma, sexual harassment and abuse of power, student–teacher sexual relationships, misogyny and womanizing, adultery and infidelity, discussions of sexual assault and sex trafficking, death and mortality, loneliness and isolation, animal grief and pet loss, ageism and anxiety about aging, disability references, emotionally difficult discussions of trauma and exploitation
• Movie
  The Friend is a 2024 drama film written and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel. It is based on Sigrid Nunez's 2018 National Book Award-winning novel of the same name. The film stars Naomi Watts, Bill Murray, and a Great Dane named Bing, and was released theatrically on March 28, 2025.
• Recommended for Book Club:
  Oh, yes!

What do you do when your best friend commits suicide—and you never saw it coming?

There’s no tidy answer, of course. Grief doesn’t arrive with a checklist, a casserole, and a helpful little map labeled You Are Here. It arrives in fragments: unanswered questions, old conversations suddenly replaying in your mind, anger that feels cruel until you realize it’s just heartbreak wearing heavier shoes. Then, in Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend, it arrives with something else entirely: a massive harlequin Great Dane who needs a home.

Imagine receiving word that your closest friend has died by suicide, then learning that he named you as the caretaker for his enormous dog. Not a goldfish. Not a reasonably portable cat with vague boundaries. A Great Dane—beautiful, grieving, and large enough to make your apartment lease look like a personal insult.

That’s the strange, tender, quietly devastating premise of The Friend, a novel that manages to braid humor and compassion into one of the most painful experiences a person can face: the suicide of someone they loved deeply. Nunez doesn’t turn grief into a neat lesson, thank goodness. She lets it be confusing, uncomfortable, absurd, loving, and occasionally funny in the way real life can be funny at the worst possible moment.

Because what happens to pets when their person dies suddenly? Or when a family is already overwhelmed by funeral plans, fractured relationships, financial worries, and unbearable loss—and refuses or simply cannot take in the animal left behind? Too often, beloved pets are surrendered to shelters, passed uneasily between relatives, or left waiting while everyone tries to decide who has room, money, patience, or permission from a landlord. Yet animals grieve, too. They lose their routines, their familiar voice, the person who fed them breakfast and knew exactly where they liked to nap.

In The Friend, the dog is not merely a charming literary accessory—although, yes, he is a Great Dane, so charm comes with a certain amount of drool and spatial inconvenience. He becomes a living reminder of the friend who is gone, a responsibility the narrator never asked for, and perhaps the one relationship capable of pulling her back toward the world.

This is a book for anyone who has ever loved someone in a complicated way. For anyone who has wondered how well we can truly know the people closest to us. And for anyone who understands that sometimes healing doesn’t arrive as a grand revelation. Sometimes it shows up at your door, takes up your entire couch, and asks to be fed.

In The Friend, an unnamed writer is reeling after the suicide of her longtime friend, mentor, and fellow literary figure. Their relationship was close, complicated, and full of the kinds of unfinished conversations that grief loves to replay over and over again.

Then comes an unexpected request: she is asked to take in his beloved Great Dane, Apollo.

There’s just one small problem—Apollo is enormous, the narrator lives in a cramped Manhattan apartment, and her building has a strict no-dogs policy. Still, faced with a grieving animal who has also lost the person he loved most, she reluctantly brings him home.

What follows is not a conventional, action-driven story so much as an intimate exploration of loss, friendship, literature, and the strange ways companionship can keep us afloat. As the narrator adjusts to life with a dog who takes up far more than his share of the bed—and emotional space—she reflects on her friend’s life, their shared history, the nature of writing, and the difficult question of what we owe the people and creatures left behind after a sudden death.

Tender, sharp, and unexpectedly funny, The Friend asks whether caring for another living being can offer comfort when nothing else makes sense. It’s a quiet novel with a huge dog at its center—and somehow, that combination works beautifully.

If you’ve ever carried grief that didn’t make sense—or loved someone whose absence seemed to rearrange the furniture of your whole inner life—The Friend may find you exactly where you are. It moved me because it doesn’t try to make loss pretty, simple, or inspirational on demand. Instead, it sits beside the mess of it, sometimes in silence, sometimes with a wry little observation that makes you laugh, and that’s what makes it feel so true. Here is why you should read The Friend:

It understands that grief is rarely graceful

The narrator’s sorrow comes with anger, confusion, longing, memory, and the relentless urge to revisit what she might have missed. If you’ve ever wished grief came with clearer instructions, this book will make you feel less alone in the chaos.

It treats suicide with compassion rather than easy answers

Nunez doesn’t pretend that love can explain everything, nor does she reduce a devastating death to one neat cause. The novel makes room for the painful questions survivors live with—the questions that often have no satisfying resolution

Apollo the Great Dane will get under your skin

He isn’t there merely to be adorable, though a giant, grieving dog is admittedly hard to ignore. He becomes a presence: awkward, demanding, comforting, and deeply connected to the person the narrator has lost. Anyone who has loved an animal will recognize the quiet intensity of that bond.

It finds humor in the unbearable

A huge dog in a no-pets New York apartment is the sort of situation that practically writes its own chaos. Those lighter moments don’t weaken the book’s emotional weight; they make it more human. Life doesn’t stop being ridiculous just because you’re heartbroken.

It’s a love letter to books and writers—without being stuffy about it

The narrator thinks deeply about writing, teaching, ambition, mentorship, and the complicated personalities behind literary lives. But you don’t need a literature degree or a shelf full of marked-up classics to feel the pull of these reflections.

It explores friendship in all its difficult, imperfect beauty

Some friendships are easy. The meaningful ones? They often carry history, misunderstandings, admiration, resentment, private jokes, and things never said aloud. The Friend honors that complexity instead of smoothing it over.

It reminds you that care can be an act of survival

Sometimes, when you’re grieving, you don’t heal because someone delivers a perfect speech. Sometimes you keep going because a dog needs dinner, a walk, a place beside you on the couch. That idea sounds simple, but in this novel, it lands with real force.

It’s short, but it stays with you

This isn’t one of those books you finish, shelve, and promptly forget while deciding what to read next. Its questions linger: How well do we know the people we love? What do we do with the love that remains after they’re gone? And can an unexpected companion help us survive what feels unsurvivable?

Read The Friend when you’re in the mood for a novel that trusts you with complicated feelings. Read it if you love books about loss that don’t talk down to you. And definitely read it if you believe a dog can sometimes understand the shape of grief better than anyone else in the room.

If The Friend left you thinking about grief, companionship, and the strange mercy of caring for another living creature, these books are excellent next reads. They range from quiet literary fiction to memoir, but each understands that love and loss rarely behave themselves.

H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
After her father’s sudden death, Macdonald buys and trains a goshawk named Mabel, weaving together memoir, natural history, grief, and an unexpectedly consuming human-animal bond. It won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and the 2014 Costa Book of the Year, later also receiving France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger. Readers who loved The Friend will appreciate its unsentimental portrayal of bereavement and the way an animal becomes both a companion and a powerful, complicated route through sorrow.

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
A lonely widowed aquarium cleaner forms an unlikely connection with Marcellus, an observant giant Pacific octopus, while a young man searches for answers about his past. Van Pelt’s debut was an instant New York Times bestseller, a Read With Jenna selection, and winner of both the 2023 Heartland Prize for Fiction and the McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize. If Apollo’s quiet, wordless presence moved you, Marcellus will too—it is another tender story about creatures who see us more clearly than we sometimes see ourselves. Read my full review here.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
Part of the Paws, Pages, and Plot Twists series. On a remote Wisconsin farm, a mute boy raised among an extraordinary breed of dogs faces a devastating family upheaval that transforms his life and the future of the dogs he loves. It was an Oprah’s Book Club pick, a #1 New York Times bestseller, and the winner of the Colorado Book Award, Indie Choice Best Author Discovery Award, and Midwest Booksellers Association Choice Award. Like The Friend, this novel takes the emotional intelligence of dogs seriously and uses that bond to explore loyalty, language, love, and unbearable loss. Read the full review here.

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Part of the Paws, Pages, and Plot Twists series. Narrated by Enzo, a devoted dog with a philosopher’s soul, this novel follows his family through love, illness, legal battles, and life’s most wrenching turns. It became a New York Times bestseller, a #1 BookSense Pick, and the winner of a 2009 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award. Readers who found themselves emotionally attached to Apollo will likely fall hard for Enzo, whose perspective makes ordinary devotion feel almost sacred—and yes, keep tissues within reach. Full review is coming.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
In this piercing memoir, Didion chronicles the year after her husband’s sudden death while navigating the disorienting realities of grief, memory, and a life abruptly split into before and after. It won the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. There are no dogs here, but readers who admired Nunez’s clear-eyed, intelligent treatment of grief will recognize the same refusal to offer easy consolation.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
Moving between 1980s Chicago during the AIDS crisis and contemporary Paris, this novel follows a circle of friends as love, illness, activism, memory, and loss reshape their lives. It won the Andrew Carnegie Medal, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Stonewall Book Award, and it was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. If what stayed with you in The Friend was the ache of losing someone you thought you knew—and the tenderness of those left behind—this devastating, deeply humane novel belongs on your list.

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
In this tender memoir, a busy London professional finds an abandoned newborn hare during the COVID-19 lockdown and becomes its unlikely guardian, discovering an extraordinary bond that changes how she sees freedom, grief, trust, and the wild world beyond her doorstep. It won the 2025 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing and the overall Wainwright Prize Book of the Year, was shortlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction and British Book Awards Book of the Year, and was named a 2024 Hay Festival Book of the Year. Readers who loved The Friend will be captivated by another deeply affecting story in which caring for an animal becomes a source of solace, responsibility, and emotional awakening—though be warned: this one may leave you looking at every small wild creature with considerably more reverence. Read my full review here.

Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley
In this candid memoir, Crosley confronts the suicide of her closest friend while trying to make sense of a loss complicated by friendship, shock, anger, and unanswered questions. It was a New York Times bestseller, a Time Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2024, an NPR Best Book of 2024, and an Indie Next Pick. For readers especially affected by The Friend’s portrayal of suicide loss, this is a sharp, intimate, and darkly funny companion read that understands grief can be both heartbreaking and bewilderingly absurd.

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