Spoiler Alert! Book Review of The Friend Because Now it is a Movie

Skip Arbuckle, Agent Starling, and the Great Dane Who XXXX at the End

I read The Friend by Sigrid Nunez for my Contemporary American Writers class, and the book knocked me sideways—in the best way, so I wrote this hybrid book review and personal narrative. It reflects Nunez’s meditative style, sly humor, and the intimate tone that made me feel like she spoke directly to me (and my dead cat). It’s a piece about grief, repetition, flatulence, and how sometimes literary analysis sounds like a Temptations song lyric.

It’s about a book—but also about the weird, human ways we connect to them.

After unexpectedly losing her lifelong best friend and mentor, a woman finds herself with the burden of caring for the unwanted dog he left behind. I do reveal the ending, so if you haven’t read the book (which you should) or seen the movie (which I need to), then please save for later.

“It is curious how the act of writing leads to confession. Not that it doesn’t also lead to lying your head off.”
—Sigrid Nunez, The Friend

While reading The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, I highlighted that quote in my Contemporary American Writers class at Johns Hopkins. It was like the Narrator had peeked into my head—where the confessions are real, the tangents are many, and the lies are mostly entertaining.

This book worked on me. It tugged at grief and loss with such a conversational tone that I forgot I was reading a novel. It felt more like sitting with someone on a long drive, drifting from suicide to dog poop to literary theory to Hannibal Lecter. Honestly, any narrator who references Lecter and Starling is my immediate best friend. I joined the Eff-Bee-Eye (you have to say it like Lecter) because I wanted to be Agent Starling and save all the lambs. That was one reason. The other was “serve my country,” of course.

The intimacy of Nunez’s narrator is disarming. She repeats herself in ways I find comforting—asking if something terrible happens to the dog, again and again, like a friend telling you the same story because it still hurts. I once kept my cat, Skip Arbuckle, alive for two months with IV fluids. He was a good listener and never asked for anything but my company. When the narrator says, “Do you want to be with her? Of course,” I knew exactly how she felt.

Nunez’s meditative style, full of what Wyatt Mason calls “interruptions,” mirrors how my brain operates. I hop from thought to thought like I’m in a one-woman musical:
Coworker: “Did you see the news about the war?”
Me: “War! Hunh! What is it good for?” (Temptations, 1970. Psychedelic Shack, Motown.)

I connect with books that feel like they’re in conversation with me, especially when they’re smart and slightly weird. And funny. Humor is my go-to when life gets a bit squirrely/uncomfortable/weird/prickly. I am fucking funny in this day and age! The narrator’s dry wit lands hard and unexpectedly—“A rent-burdened woman... decides to try writing a novel (‘and that’s going well’)” had me smirking. And when she translates a sidewalk standoff between two dogs as: “Motherfucker. I hate you. I’ll tear your fucking balls off,” I wanted to stand up and applaud.

I once gave a three-minute impromptu speech on “gas” in a college public speaking class and panicked my way through three minutes on flatulence. My fallback coping mechanism has always been humor—especially the self-deprecating kind. And I love that the narrator uses it the same way, with perfect timing and just enough restraint. The restraint is essential. Nunez even said in an interview she wanted “a certain hushed quality,” like whispering to someone you trust.

That whispering narrator taught me about trauma-induced blindness, animals’ tears, and the way dogs grieve. The novel grieves, too—messily, meditatively, and with repetition. “And now he’s officially a dead white male,” the narrator says. Then again, “Now he’s just another dead white male.” That repetition echoes. Sometimes, we repeat ourselves because we’re still processing. Sometimes, it’s the only way to make something sink in.

Sometimes, also, your phone hears you say “wrinkles,” and suddenly, you’re being offered discounts on red-light face mask products by Instagram. That’s less poetic, but no less real.

And yes.
The dog fucking dies at the end.