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Riverhead Books, 2020

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Jessica vestuto, more online by jessica vestuto.

America Was Hard to Find

What Are You Going Through

By sigrid nunez, reviewed by jessica vestuto.

Trying to describe a death while it’s happening is like trying to make a bed while lying in it. It’s an awkward and often doomed endeavor without clean lines—that is, unless you are Sigrid Nunez. Her 2018 National Book Award-winning novel, The Friend , was about the aftermath of a death; her highly anticipated follow-up novel, What Are You Going Through , masterfully depicts a death as it is happening. The book is a transitive space, a verb between two nouns, a going through.

What is the narrator going through? For most of the novel, in typical Nunez fashion, she seems less an actual person than a sounding board for other people’s sad stories. A neighbor describes his elderly mother’s dwindling sanity. A jaded ectomorph at the gym laments the inevitability of aging. A shelter cat, in one Kafkaesque scene, shares his sad plight. Each story centers on loss, and through Nunez’s spare prose, each story feels overheard and fleeting, as though the narrator is listening to an intimate conversation through thin walls. Reading these stories, you slip into a state of reverence without realizing it; you find yourself breathing more quietly, partly out of respect, partly out of fear you might scare them away.

Slowly the narrator’s own sad story is revealed: a close friend is dying of cancer. The novel follows the conversation between the friends as the dying woman considers both how her life has been and how it will end. “Dying is a role we play like any other role in life,” the narrator says, and at first the friend plays the role admirably, analyzing the painful and awkward process of dying thoughtfully and even humorously. The narrator is the ideal audience for the performance: she doesn’t pity her friend, nor does she ignore the diagnosis. Instead, she listens devotedly to her friend’s thoughts on death and occasionally offers her own. The pair complement each other well—the friend exceedingly blunt, the narrator exceedingly passive—and their conversations evolve into a comfortable and familiar rhythm. They’re the kind of friends, should one of them set a small fire in her life, to look for patterns in the flames together and cackle.

Midway through the novel, that rhythm is disturbed: the friend asks the narrator for a life-changing favor, and the narrative shifts abruptly. The friend becomes suddenly vulnerable, and the narrator’s passivity suddenly dissipates as the magnitude of the request forces her to take action. She must decide what role she will play in the friend’s death, a decision she finds more tormenting than the death itself. This is Nunez’s primary concern in What Are You Going Through : not how a person faces her own death, but how she faces another’s. Yes, dying is a role we will all play eventually, but being near someone who’s dying, experiencing other people’s suffering, is a role we play as well.

Nunez’s title is drawn from Simone Weil: “The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, ‘What are you going through?’” Out of context, this question seems an easy one, but Nunez’s novel imbues the query with remarkable weight and urgency. For Nunez, it’s not the question itself, or whatever answer might follow it, but rather the act of asking the question that matters. The series of sad stories, of “going-throughs” heard by the narrator, reveal the power in turning one’s attention to someone else’s sorrow, inquiring into what someone is going through, and listening to the answer. In the end, the narrator’s choice to move as close as possible to experiencing what her friend is going through, to be there for her in an inordinately intense and difficult situation, is what defines her.

During a rare public outburst, the narrator breaks down in front of a stranger who tries and fails to comfort her by expressing gratuitous pity, making her promise not to forget about “self-care.” Later, she remarks on the experience: “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who upon seeing someone else suffering think, That could happen to me, and those who think, That will never happen to me. The first kind of people help us to endure, the second kind make life hell.” There’s no question—the sad stories in What Are You Going Through could happen to anyone. The book poignantly reveals a sorrow that belongs to everyone, and in this, offers a lasting comfort.

Published on February 16, 2021

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WHAT ARE YOU GOING THROUGH

by Sigrid Nunez ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 8, 2020

Dryly funny and deeply tender; draining and worth it.

A woman is enlisted to help a dying friend commit suicide in Nunez’s latest novel, which—true to form—is short, sharp, and quietly brutal.

Nunez returns to many of the topics she mined in The Friend , which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2018: the meaning of life, the nature of death, writing, the purpose of friendship. This is hardly a criticism; in fact, what else is there? The novel, spare and elegant and immediate, often feeling closer to essay than fiction, is as much about its unnamed narrator’s thoughts as the events of her life (is there a difference?). To the extent there is a “plot”—less a “plot” than “circumstances to inspire thinking”—it is this: A writer in late middle age goes to another city to visit an old friend who is sick. Later, when it becomes clear that the friend’s condition is terminal, she enlists our narrator to assist her in ending her life. Not to help with the actual dying part—“I know what to do,” she quips. “It’s not complicated”—but rather with everything that should happen in the interim. What she wants is to rent a house for the end, nothing special, “just somewhere I can be peaceful and do the last things that need to be done.” And she would like our narrator to be there. “I can’t be completely alone,” she explains. “What if something goes wrong? What if everything goes wrong?” She will, she promises “make it as much fun as possible.” Reluctantly, the narrator agrees. Most of the novel, though, is not about this, or at least not directly. Instead, the narrator considers her past and her present. She attends the doomsday climate lecture of an ex-boyfriend. She thinks about an unpleasant neighbor. She recounts, delightfully and in great detail, the plot of a murder mystery she is reading and then circles back to the trauma of aging, for everyone, and especially for women. The novel is concerned with the biggest possible questions and confronts them so bluntly it is sometimes jarring: How should we live in the face of so much suffering?

Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-593-19141-5

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

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New York Times Bestseller

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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THE LIFE IMPOSSIBLE

by Matt Haig ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2024

Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.

A British widow travels to Ibiza and learns that it’s never too late to have a happy life.

In a world that seems to be getting more unstable by the moment, Haig’s novels are a steady ship in rough seas, offering a much-needed positive message. In works like the bestselling The Midnight Library (2020), he reminds us that finding out what you truly love and where you belong in the universe are the foundations of building a better existence. His latest book continues this upbeat messaging, albeit in a somewhat repetitive and facile way. Retired British schoolteacher Grace Winters discovers that an old acquaintance has died and left her a ramshackle home in Ibiza. A widow who lost her only child years earlier, Grace is at first reluctant to visit the house, because, at 72, she more or less believes her chance for happiness is over—but when she rouses herself to travel to the island, she discovers the opposite is true. A mystery surrounds her friend’s death involving a roguish islander, his activist daughter, an internationally famous DJ, and a strange glow in the sea that acts as a powerful life force and upends Grace’s ideas of how the cosmos works. Framed as a response to a former student’s email, the narrative follows Grace’s journey from skeptic (she was a math teacher, after all) to believer in the possibility of magic as she learns to move on from the past. Her transformation is the book’s main conflict, aside from a protest against an evil developer intent on destroying Ibiza’s natural beauty. The outcome is never in doubt, and though the story often feels stretched to the limit—this novel could have easily been a novella—the author’s insistence on the power of connection to change lives comes through loud and clear.

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024

ISBN: 9780593489277

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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Books of The Times

Sigrid Nunez Follows ‘The Friend’ With a Sorrowful, Funny Novel About Death

By Dwight Garner

Aug. 31, 2020
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It takes something more than intelligence to be able to write intelligently. It requires something closer to echolocation, an acute sense, in mid-flight, of where you are.

Is this sort of intelligence, Michael Kinsley asked in his book about aging, merely an extra spritz of some chemical in the brain? Whatever it is, Sigrid Nunez has it. When I open one of her novels, I almost always know immediately: This is where I want to be.

“What Are You Going Through” is Nunez’s follow-up to “The Friend,” which won a National Book Award in 2018. That novel had a big dog on the front. This one has a small cat.

Animal fanciers: Keep it together. The cat in Nunez’s novel is appealing (it wryly narrates the experience of being thrown into a dumpster) but the role it plays is sub-Guildensternish.

“What Are You Going Through” is a short novel, set roughly in the present. It’s as good as “The Friend,” if not better. The primal question it asks is this: If a terminally ill friend asked you to be with them, in another room, while they took the pills that would end their life, would you say yes or no? Either answer has its moral hazards.

The terminally ill friend in this novel resembles Susan Sontag, whom Nunez knew and wrote about in a memoir titled “Sempre Susan.” This friend is an intimidating writer; she lives in New York City; before chemotherapy, she had important hair.

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Review: What Are You Going Through

By Sigrid Nunez ’72BC, ’75SOA (Riverhead).

Cover of What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez

“I went to hear a man give a talk,” writes Sigrid Nunez ’72BC, ’75SOA in the opening sentence of her new novel, What Are You Going Through . Like much of her prose, the line is simple and direct. But readers should not be fooled by the straightforward tone; Nunez’s seventh novel is stunningly complex, a nuanced, layered look at aging, friendship, love, and death.

Fans of Nunez will find both the themes and the voice familiar. She first earned acclaim with her 1995 debut, the autobiographical novel A Feather on the Breath of God , narrated by an unnamed mixed-race immigrant girl growing up in a Brooklyn housing project in the 1950s and ’60s. After experimenting with literary forms over the next two decades (the novel Mitz was a mock biography of Virginia Woolf’s pet marmoset; she also wrote a memoir of her 1970s friendship with Susan Sontag ’93HON), Nunez returned to the unnamed narrator in The Friend , a touching examination of grief that won the 2018 National Book Award. What Are You Going Through appears to be the next chapter in the character’s life.

The man in the novel’s first sentence is not some random stranger: he’s the narrator’s ex — though theirs is not the relationship that drives the narrative. The protagonist went to the talk while on a trip to visit a sick friend, and she uses the visit to explore the ideas of aging and love, empathy and the necessity of connecting with others. Nunez shows how easy it is to let the bonds of friendship fray.

The narrator’s tone is intimate not just as she describes encounters with her close friends but also as she reports on conversations and incidents in the lives of others. For much of the book, we are in her head, gaining insight into her character from seemingly mundane events. She recounts, for example, a conversation with a woman at her gym who strives to maintain her figure. “She knew it sounded crazy, the woman in the locker room said, but when her sister got cancer and lost thirty pounds she couldn’t help wishing it would happen to her. And was it so crazy? After all, always hating the way she looked, always fighting against her own body and always, always losing the battle meant that she was depressed all the time.” Through these encounters and reflections, Nunez gives us tender and fraught glimpses into people’s complicated lives.

It takes some time for Nunez to introduce the central plot point: the narrator’s sick friend is dying of cancer and wants her to stay by her side as she prepares to kill herself. “I will not go out in mortifying anguish,” the friend says. “I can’t be completely alone. I mean, this is a new adventure — who can say what it will really be like. What if something goes wrong? What if everything goes wrong? I need to know there’s someone in the next room.”

“Epic struggle to keep my composure, to choose my words,” Nunez’s narrator notes grimly, before asking if there is anyone else who can take on this role. But What Are You Going Through is not a sad book, despite the tears shed or fought back. When the narrator finally agrees to aid her dying friend, the friend texts back, “I promise to make it as much fun as possible.” And indeed, there is a life-affirming quality and even humor in the evolving companionship as the two women prepare for one’s death. The book may not quite have the narrative engine or emotional engagement of some of Nunez’s previous work, but the novel has much to recommend it. The writer’s willingness to examine the power of compassion for a friend and the human fear of dying alone of a terminal illness has never felt more potent or more relevant.

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New Novel From National Book Award Winner Sigrid Nunez

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez

What Are You Going Through ( Riverhead Books ) by National Book Award winner Sigrid Nunez is a perfect follow-up to her previous novel, The Friend , where a woman’s friend passes away and she takes on the responsibility of her dog.

In Nunez’s latest novel, empathy is the focus when this narrator’s friend, who has cancer, asks if they could go away on vacation together. Her plan is to not be alone during the trip when she decides to end her own life with pills. Companionship and friendship have risks and the narrator agrees to the vacation, taking it all on to accompany her friend on this emotional journey.

“I don’t know who it was, but someone, maybe or maybe not Henry James, said that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who upon seeing someone else suffering think, that could happen to me, and those who think, that will never happen to me. The first kind of people help us to endure, the second kind make life hell.”

The characters’ exploration of the will to survive, the zest for life and the finality of death give the reader a lot to think about. The unnamed narrator describes several encounters with random people she crosses paths with in her life and these stories help to answer questions about humanity and the title question: what are you going through?

Although the premise of What Are You Going Through sounds depressing, the story is not. Nunez is introspective and thoughtful, clever and humorous. Her characters are humane and compassionate.

Through her storytelling, Nunez addresses illness, forgiveness and communication, along with the challenges of being a writer. She also demonstrates how people have a need to tell their stories, and the stories are interesting if you bother to stop and listen.

What Are You Going Through is available for purchase.

Check out the BookNationByJen review of The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, a wonderful story about a woman and her dog.

Buy this Book!

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez

Jennifer Blankfein

Jennifer Gans Blankfein is a freelance marketing consultant and book reviewer. She graduated from Lehigh University with a Psychology degree and has a background in advertising. Her experience includes event coordination and fundraising along with editing a weekly, local, small business newsletter. Jennifer loves to talk about books, is an avid reader, and currently writes a book blog, Book Nation by Jen . She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two sons and black lab.

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'What Are You Going Through': Sigrid Nunez turns her empathetic eye on death in new novel

It’s hard to mourn something you haven’t lost yet. There are no instructions for navigating that tangled limbo. How do you stave off the inevitable anxiety? How do you observe a slow death?

National Book Award-winner Sigrid Nunez’s latest novel, "What Are You Going Through" (Riverhead, 224 pp., ★★★½ out of four), doesn’t claim to have all the answers. Instead, it just asks us to listen to the moment. Nunez’s unnamed narrator glides through chapters while taking the path of least resistance, simply bearing witness to eavesdropped conversations, to her ex’s university lecture, to the monologues of her Airbnb hosts’ cat.

And that’s the narrator’s approach to life, even when her friend (also unnamed) asks her for an immense favor. Her friend is dying of cancer, and plans on euthanasia: She asks the narrator to be her companion through the process.

Without presenting a “right” or “wrong,” Nunez carefully guides the novel through varying perspectives. People desperately want her friend to fight. But the narrator’s friend is exhausted, both by cancer and by the clamoring voices that want to call her a “hero.” “Some of the worst comes from the cancer support community – think of your cancer as a gift, an opportunity for spiritual growth, for developing resources you never knew you had, think of cancer as a step in the journey to becoming your best self. I mean, seriously. Who wants to die listening to that crap.”

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All the while, the narrator doesn’t pass judgment. It begs the question: Why have this first-person perspective if we’re rarely going to get her thoughts? Nunez offers the answer at the start – the novel’s title borrows from a quote by French philosopher Simone Weil: “The love of our neighbors in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, ‘What are you going through?’”

Cultivating care for others is the crowning achievement of the novel. "What Are You Going Through" balances the narrator’s restraint with other characters’ impassioned perspectives, offering a touching, poignant illustration of what it means to have empathy for the lives around you.

It is especially apt, given how the book is published during a time of collective mourning. The first chapter revolves around a lecture on climate change and the devastating future humans will face in the coming years if significant action isn’t taken soon: “Whatever must be done to forestall catastrophe, whatever actions or sacrifices, it was now clear that humankind lacked the will, the collective will, to undertake them. To any intelligent alien, he said, we would appear to be in the grip of a death wish.”

That morbid, urgent reality looms over the rest of the novel, reminding us that this particular kind of grief – anticipating loss – isn’t unique. And across every case, there’s no simple one-size-fits-all solution.

Instead of hunting for an impossible guidebook, "What Are You Going Through" prompts us to think about our own positions in the world, and the community we can offer to each other. Don’t mistake the narrator’s quiet action for passivity. Listening isn’t just doing nothing. Depending on the context, it can be an act of harm or a blessing.

Culture | Books

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez: a thought-provoking novel about life and death

“Women’s stories are often sad stories”, muses the unnamed narrator in this thought-provoking novel about life and death. And the stories she recounts are mostly very sad indeed, from a once beautiful woman’s dismay at losing her looks and husband, to a daughter telling her grief-stricken father that though he may have lost his wife, she has lost a mother, to a young woman imagining how her life will be in old age and discovering, as she gets there, it’s not like that at all.

While each of these could work as short stories in themselves, Nunez, who became a literary sensation in the US at the age of 67 when her novel, The Friend, won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction, has threaded them into her bigger narrative about what it means to live and die well.

One of the narrator’s oldest friends has had a terminal cancer diagnosis and after treatment hasn’t worked, decides she wants to euthanise herself. The friend, who has a daughter she hates, asks the narrator to stay with her while she does it. The narrator unwillingly agrees and they go to a tastefully renovated Airbnb rental on the New England coast to do it. The dying woman promises to make it “an adventure”, which proves difficult, especially when she realises she has forgotten to pack her life-ending drugs.

Earlier on, the narrator had been to a lecture on climate change given by her ex who believes the world is doomed. While staying in the rental, she meets up with him again, and he tells her “the privileged well-educated Americans who elected a climate change denialist to the world’s most powerful office” are to blame, and that he has lost interest in everything.

After an accidental flood, the narrator returns to her friend’s apartment with her, and in what time remains, looks after her, achieving new levels of intimacy in friendship with her, as she reflects that watching a person die has the same intensity as falling in love. Nunez widens and narrows the focus of her lens, from the death of the world, to the death of a close friend and back again, with superb control.

Her writing is taut, clear and insightful. The title of the book, cribbed from the French philosopher Simone Weil, who wrote ‘Quel est donc ton tourment?” is a reminder that somebody somewhere is always going through something, and that the key to living well is to take the time not just to ask the question, but to listen to the answer.

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez (Virago, £16.99)

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Author Interviews

Sigrid nunez wants to know: 'what are you going through'.

Mandalit del Barco

The new book by Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through, follows the conversations and encounters of a woman's ordinary life that enable the reader to reflect on the times we're living through.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Reading Matters

Book reviews of mainly modern & contemporary fiction

‘What Are You Going Through’ by Sigrid Nunez

Fiction – paperback; Virago; 210 pages; 2020.

Sigrid Nunez’s latest novel What Are You Going Through is a beguiling story that doesn’t really fit into a box. The blurb writers have tried to paint it as a tale about two friends, one of whom asks the other to be there when she chooses to die euthanasia style, but it is so much more complex and convoluted than that.

This is a story about stories — the stories we hear, the stories we write, the stories we tell ourselves. (“This is the saddest story I have ever heard,” the opening line from Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier , is a constant refrain.)

It’s about truth and fiction, confronting our fears, searching for hope to sustain us and caring for others. Most importantly, it’s about life and death, and asks pertinent questions about what makes a good life — and what makes a good death.

Helping a friend out

What Are You Going Through is told through the eyes of an unnamed narrator, a middle-aged writer who has never been married or had children. She has an ex-partner who is a professor and well-known author, and when the book opens she (secretly) attends a talk he is delivering “based on a long article he had written for a magazine” about humankind’s death wish.

It was all over, he said again. No more the faith and consolation that had sustained generations and generations, the knowledge that, though our own individual time on earth must end, what we loved and what had meaning for us would go on, the world of which we had been a part would endure — that time had ended, he said. Our world and our civilization would not endure, he said. We must live and die in this new knowledge.

This, essentially, is a foreshadowing of a predicament the narrator finds herself in when she agrees to be with her terminally ill friend at the end of her life. The end, however, won’t be from natural causes. Her friend has decided that she will take a lethal tablet at a time of her choosing because she’s seeking peace, not the pain and agony of a death from cancer.

The narrator agrees to help because “I knew that, in her place, I would have hoped to be able to do exactly what she now wanted to do. And I would have needed someone to help me.”

A book of two halves

What Are You Going Through is a book of two halves. In the first, Nunez takes her time to build up the idea that all people really want out of life is to be noticed, to be seen , for others to understand what they are going through. And in the second, she recounts what happens when the narrator and her friend rent an Airbnb for a short holiday in which they will go exploring, eat out and generally relax before one of them will take a lethal drug to end it all.

There’s a lot to like about this book: the finger-on-the-pulse commentary about modern living and the craziness of our lives in general, the easy-going narrative style, the humour and the cool, calm intelligent voice of the narrator.

The meandering anecdotal style threw me at first, but once I warmed to it I loved not knowing what to expect next. That’s because much of what the narrator tells us is observational, a bit like a personal diary in which she recalls scenes she’s glimpsed, people she’s met and conversations she’s overheard.

On more than one occasion I was reminded of Helen Garner’s wonderful Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume 1, 1978-1987 . (As an aside, Nunez and Garner seem to have similar writing styles and observational skills, the ability to create a whole scene or feeling from the briefest of detail. And it hasn’t escaped my attention that Garner’s novel The Spare Room is also about a friend dying from cancer.)

Despite the heavy subject matter, I rather enjoyed What Are You Going Through . Having read Nunez’s brilliant 2006 novel The Last of Her Kind earlier this year, I had high expectations. I wasn’t disappointed.

I read this for Novellas in November hosted by Cathy and Bookish Becks.

Published by kimbofo

I am a book obsessive who has been charting my reading life online since the early 2000s. View all posts by kimbofo

19 thoughts on “‘What Are You Going Through’ by Sigrid Nunez”

Pingback: It’s Novellas in November time! #NovNov

This does sound quite similar, at least in theme, to The Spare Room, so I think I’ll let that one settle before trying this. It does sound really good though.

I *adored* The Last of her Kind which I read earlier this year so have added a few of Nunezes books to my TBR. I think she may just become one of my favourite authors…

Now that’s praise indeed!

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This does sound intriguing. I’m at the point of life when I guess I should think about death more often, and don’t. This looks an interesting viewpoint from which to look at the whole thing.

I’ve got The Friend on the TBR. Have you read that one? TBH I think I was hyped into buying it.)

I have that one on my Kindle, bought when my London book group chose it to read. I’m not sure what happened — i must have been away on holidays or sick or something – because I didn’t end up reading the book and didn’t go to the meeting. But The Friend has been sitting there waiting for me to read it ever since. I have only heard good things about it…

I don’t remember who recommended it to me. BTW Have you found a congenial book group in Perth?

I found a book group when I first moved but they only read dystopian fiction so only went to two meetings. I signed up to join a new one but they moved their meetings to a time / day that didn’t work for me. Was considering setting up one myself but I’ve got more than enough other stuff to worry about…

I haven’t had much luck myself. I was enjoying the IndoBookGroup this year, but when they switched to Zoom, I thought, no I just can’t face that…

I hate zoom.

So do I. I especially hate it when I pay for an author event and it doesn’t work.

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Pingback: Novellas in November Begins! | Bookish Beck
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When my Six Degrees … goes live this month, you’ll discover that I’ve linked to this post. I hope you don’t mind. It’s supposed to be a compliment!

No problem, Margaret. Looking forward to seeing your post.

Pingback: Six degrees of Separation: From ‘What are you Going Through’ to ‘Travelling in a Strange Land’ – Reading Matters
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A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice One of People Magazine ‘s 10 Best Books of Fall

Editors’ choice: 9 recommended books of the week ( new york times ), best september books ( entertainment weekly ), 16 best books of september ( kirkus ), best books of fall ( observer ), 6 best books of september ( shondaland ), 10 most anticipated releases of september ( huffpost ), best books of fall ( time ), 21 best books of fall ( buzzfeed ), 5 books not to miss ( usa today ), best books of september ( cnn ), best books of 2020 ( harper’s bazaar ), what are you going through.

Riverhead Books, Hardcover, September 8, 2020 / Paperback, September 7, 2021

NOW A FILM, THE ROOM NEXT DOOR , BY PEDRO ALMODÓVAR, WITH JULIANNE MOORE AND TILDA SWINTON

National bestseller, a new york times critics’ top book of 2020, one of people magazine’s top 10 books of 2020, a best book of 2020: o,the oprah magazine, kirkus reviews, times literary supplement, the guardian , and npr, a pick of the year’s best paperbacks, 2021, by the sunday times (uk) .

A woman describes a series of encounters she has with various people in the ordinary course of her life. Some, like the old friend she goes to visit at a cancer clinic, are people she knows well; others are total strangers. All share a need to talk about themselves. The narrator orchestrates this chorus of voices, sometimes paraphrasing others’ stories, other times allowing them to speak, in extended monologues, for themselves. What emerges is a portrait of the way we live now, in a world endlessly troubled by crises, and the dramatically changing nature of human relationships in our time. For the most part, the narrator assumes the role of a passive listener to her collective storytellers. Then one of them surprises her with an extraordinary request, and she is drawn into what will become an intense and transformative experience of her own.

Praise for What Are You Going Through

“Love, death, friendship, compassion and so much wisdom. I just adore Sigrid Nunez.” Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water.

“It takes something more than intelligence to be able to write intelligently. It requires something closer to echolocation, an acute sense, in mid-flight, of where you are . . . . Whatever it is, Sigrid Nunez has it. When I open one of her novels, I almost always know immediately: This is where I want to be. . . . “What Are You Going Through” . . . [is] as good as “The Friend,” if not better.” The New York Times

“Rereading ‘What Are You Going Through,’ I was dazed by the novel’s grace: its creation of a narrative consciousness that, by emptying and extending itself to others, insured that its vitality would never dwindle, never dim. Nunez had captured what Woolf, in her exquisite story on aging, “The Lady in the Looking Glass,” describes as life’s ‘profounder state of being,’ ‘the state that is to the mind what breathing is to the body.’” The New Yorker

“Nunez tells the simplest of stories . . . and expands it into an exploration of the largest of themes: nothing less than the realities of living and dying in this world and how we feel about both. Beauty, friendship, nature, art: These are the salves to loneliness and despair, and Nunez offers them all in this searching look into life and death.” The New York Times Book Review

“A book as luminous as it is deep and as slippery as it is firmly grounded. As its narrator observes, ‘[N]o matter how sad, a beautifully told story lifts you up.’ ‘What Are You Going Through’ is as beautifully told as they come.” Seattle Times

“Emotionally intense and impossible to put down . . . leavened with wit and tenderness.” People Magazine

“Nunez’s prose is conspiratorial and elegant, whimsical and wise. Alongside a contemplation of mortality are winks: For all its pain and seriousness, life is absurd, comical; we humans are impossible to figure out—and yet so tender.” O, The Oprah Magazine

“It’s Nunez, long admired for her fearless, ruminative, sharply insightful work. . . . One’s moved by the scope and pith of this novel’s ambition, as it addresses our biggest questions by naming the particular. . . . But most striking may be how Nunez’s narrator transfigures, through deepening compassion, from a wry, circumspect observer into someone raked raw with hapless love for her vanishing friend. . . . It’s the here-and-now of ‘What Are You Going Through’ that spears us, its chorale-like testimonies, their preemptive requiem.” Washington Post

“[A] beautiful portrait of pain and loss.” TIME Magazine

“ What Are You Going Through is unflinching on the theme of mortality and thus presents an openhearted honesty so rare it feels thirst-quenching.” — The Paris Review “ What Are You Going Through explicitly aims for and pretty much manages to hit all of William Faulkner’s prescribed goalposts for writers: ‘love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.’ Nunez has written another deeply humane reminder of the great solace of both companionship and literature.” NPR

“There was a profound textual pleasure in The Friend and there is in What Are You Going Through , too. It’s not just that these books feel ‘real’ in that the things that happen in them could happen in life; the narrators’ struggle to think and write and make sense of these experiences feels real.” Bookforum

“[A] touching, poignant illustration of what it means to have empathy for the lives around you. It is especially apt, given how the book is published during a time of collective mourning.” USA Today

“Nunez’s accounts are as sensitive as a polygraph’s needle, the precision of her observations turning banality itself into a source of pathos . . . . Among the keenest observers of the messiness of pity, compassion, and love, her writing takes ideas about how we should treat other beings seriously while never losing sight of the social conditions that make such work so complicated and hard.” Los Angeles Review of Books

“Nunez is both direct and yet incredibly subtle as she traces choices we make when faced with questions of sustainability and end of life care in this powerful novel.” Observer

“[A] digressive and surprisingly cheerful and funny tale . . . . crafted with consummate care . . . . with meditations on writing, the life of the mind, how we age, feminism, Me Too and our obligation to others.” The Sunday Times (UK)

“A remarkable exploration of life and death, Sigrid Nunez’s novel is a quiet, almost meditative experience—and all the more powerful for it . . . . [Its] melancholy is tempered with humour and a revelatory appreciation of small moments of pleasure and friendship, perhaps the best way to be right now.” The Observer (UK)

“No moment is not fertile; nothing is insignificant as Nunez threads her connective material to give a riveting picture of friendship intensifying as it draws to a close. . . . All stories are love stories, she tells us. And few take us in so beautifully capacious a way to the place where this one ends.” Times Literary Supplement

“[A] gloriously meditative novel about friendship, death, and the bleak state of the world . . . . [A]lthough it encompasses so much sorrow, it is also a true pleasure to read, a novel bursting with wit, warmth, and human empathy.” The Independent

“[B]rilliant . . . . The narrative control of this novel simply dazzles. Nunez moves into and out of first and third person, past and present tense and direct and indirect speech as though she were shifting the gears of a Ferrari at full speed on a race track.” The Spectator

“ What Are You Going Through considers what it means to die well . . . . But as with The Friend , the book’s appeal lies less in the plot, such as it is, than in the wandering thoughts and insightful observations that it sets off.” The Economist

“This is not a book about empathy so much as respect for the unknowable . . . . It’s a mark of Nunez’s wisdom that she has created something witty and hopeful from characters who are surveying the closing stages of life.” Financial Times

“Nunez widens and narrows the focus of her lens, from the death of the world, to the death of a close friend and back again, with superb control. Her writing is taut, clear and insightful. Evening Standard

“Big questions about mortality and responsibility rebound through this philosophical novel . . . . [T]he result is . . . personable and invigorating, and delivered in intoxicatingly readable, washed-clean prose reminiscent of Rachel Cusk.” Daily Mail

“Profound, moving and brilliant.” Mail on Sunday

“At a time when the pandemic has made everyone feel unmoored, this book serves as a respite from modern anxieties. Spare in its emotional coherence, Nunez renders a graceful portrait of empathy amid chaos. This is a heartbreaking yet life-affirming book about the stress and solitude of being alive – a compassionate portrayal of life as we know it.” The Skinny

“Like its National Book Award-winning predecessor, The Friend , this exquisite portrait of female friendship, aging and loss packs more insight into its barely 200 pages than many serious novels twice that length.” BookPage

“Told with her singular sensitivity and wit, What Are You Going Through is a quietly powerful testament to Sigrid Nunez’s ability to render even the most emotionally ruinous events with intimacy and grace — there is no better chronicler of empathy . . . This book is profound, devastating and uplifting all at once.” Refinery29

“[A] richly interiorized novel. . . . With both compassion and joy, Nunez contemplates how we survive life’s certain suffering, and don’t, with words and one another.” Booklist , starred review

“ A deeply compassionate book about death, modern life, and human connection.” Harper’s Bazaar

“Sigrid Nunez orchestrates a beautiful chorus of humanness here, and the novel asks a question we might all be thinking in these distanced times: What does it mean to really be there for someone in times of hardship?” Literary Hub

“Deeply empathetic without being sentimental, this novel explores women’s lives, their choices, and how they support one another. . . . Highly recommended for readers who favor emotional resonance over escapism during difficult times.” Library Journal , starred review

“Nunez returns to many of the topics she mined in The Friend, which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2018: the meaning of life, the nature of death, writing, the purpose of friendship. [S]pare and elegant and immediate … the novel is concerned with the biggest possible questions and confronts them so bluntly it is sometimes jarring: How should we live in the face of so much suffering? Dryly funny and deeply tender; draining and worth it.” Kirkus , starred review

“Deceptively casual and ultimately fierce. . . . Much of the novel’s action is internal, as the attention of its . . . narrator flicks from books to movies to sharp-edged thoughts about the people she encounters, offering plenty of surprises. Those willing to jump along with her should be tantalized by the provocative questions she raises.” Publishers Weekly

Book Nation by Jen

Best book blog for reviews, recommendations and author interviews, through thoughtful storytelling, sigrid nunez asks the question…what are you going through.

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez is a perfect follow up to her previous book, The Friend , where a woman’s friend passes away and she takes on the responsibility of her dog.

The characters’ exploration of the will to survive, the zest for life and the finality of death give the reader a lot to think about. The unnamed narrator describes several encounters with random people she crossed paths with in her life and these stories help to answer questions about humanity and the title question, What Are You Going Through.

Through her storytelling, author Sigrid Nunez addresses illness, forgiveness and communication, along with the challenges of being a writer. She also indicates how people have a need to tell their story, and the stories are interesting if you bother to stop and listen. Although the premise of What Are You Going Through sounds depressing, the story is not. I happen to really enjoy the author’s writing and find her to be introspective and thoughtful in her novels. Nunez is clever and humorous, and her characters are humane and compassionate. I highly recommend this book.

More from Sigrid Nunez

If you want to read more from this National Book Award-Winning Author, check out The Friend , a wonderful story about a woman and her dog.

Goodreads Summary

About the Author

Sigrid Nunez has published seven novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, Salvation City , and, most recently, The Friend . She 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 has also been shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award. 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, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Among the journals to which she has contributed are 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, McSweeney’s, Tin House , The Believer and newyorker.com. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including four Pushcart Prize volumes and four anthologies of Asian-American literature. One of her short stories was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2019. Her work has either been or is being translated into twenty-five languages.

Nunez has taught at Columbia, Princeton, and the New School, and has been a visiting writer or writer in residence at Amherst, Smith, Baruch, Vassar, Syracuse, and the University of California, Irvine, among others. Currently teaching at Boston University, she has also been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and of several other writers’ conferences across the country. She lives in New York City.

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What Are You Going Through: A Novel Hardcover – September 8, 2020

Print length 224 pages
Language English
Publisher Riverhead Books
Publication date September 8, 2020
Dimensions 5.3 x 0.83 x 8.3 inches
ISBN-10 0593191412
ISBN-13 978-0593191415
See all details

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What Are You Going Through, Sigrid Nunez, sigrid nunez books

Editorial Reviews

I went to hear a man give a talk. The event was held on a college campus. The man was a professor, but he taught at a different school, in another part of the country. He was a well-known author, who, earlier that year, had won an international prize. But although the event was free and open to the public, the auditorium was only half full. I myself would not have been in the audience, I would not even have been in that town, had it not been for a coincidence. A friend of mine was being treated in a local hospital that specializes in treating her particular type of cancer. I had come to visit this friend, this very dear old friend whom I had not seen in several years, and whom, given the gravity of her illness, I might not see again.

It was the third week of September, 2017. I had booked a room through Airbnb. The host was a retired librarian, a widow. From her profile I knew that she was also the mother of four, the grandmother of six, and that her hobbies included cooking and going to the theater. She lived on the top floor of a small condo about two miles from the hospital. The apartment was clean and tidy and smelled faintly of cumin. The guest room was decorated in the way that most people appear to have agreed will make a person feel at home: plush area rugs, a bed with a hedge of pillows and a plump down duvet, a small table holding a ceramic pitcher of dried flowers, and, on the nightstand, a stack of paperback mysteries. The kind of place where I never do feel at home. What most people call cozy-gemŸtlich, hygge-others find stifling.

A cat had been promised, but I saw no sign of one. Only later, when it was time for me to leave, would I learn that, between my booking and my stay, the host's cat had died. She delivered this news brusquely, immediately changing the subject so that I couldn't ask her about it-which I was in fact going to do only because something in her manner made me think that she wanted to be asked about it. And it occurred to me that maybe it wasn't emotion that had made her change the subject like that but rather worry that I might later complain. Depressing host talked too much about dead cat. The sort of comment you saw on the site all the time.

In the kitchen, as I drank the coffee and ate from the tray of snacks the host had prepared for me (while she, in the way recommended for Airbnb hosts, made herself scarce), I studied the corkboard where she posted publicity for guests about goings-on in town. An exhibition of Japanese prints, an arts-and-crafts fair, a visiting Canadian dance company, a jazz festival, a Caribbean culture festival, a schedule for the local sports arena, a spoken-word reading. And, that night, at seven thirty, the author's talk.

In the photograph, he looks harsh-no, "harsh" is too harsh. Call it stern. That look that comes to many older white men at a certain age: stark-white hair, beaky nose, thin lips, piercing gaze. Like raptors. Hardly inviting. Hardly an image to say, Please, do come hear me speak. Would love to see you there! More like, Make no mistake, I know a lot more than you do. You should listen to me. Maybe then you'll know what's what.

A woman introduces him. The head of the department that has invited him to speak. She is a familiar type: the glam academic, the intellectual vamp. Someone at pains for it to be known that, although smart and well educated, although a feminist and a woman in a position of power, the lady is no frump, no boring nerd, no sexless harridan. And so what if she's past a certain age. The cling of the skirt, the height of the heels, the scarlet mouth and tinted hair (I once heard a salon colorist say, I believe it's got to hurt a woman's ability to think if she has gray hair), everything says: I'm still fuckable. A slimness that almost certainly means going much of each day feeling hungry. It crosses such women's minds with some sad regularity that in France intellectuals can be sex symbols. Even if the symbol can sometimes be embarrassing (Bernard-Henri LŽvy and his unbuttoned shirts). These women have memories of being tormented in girlhood, not for their looks but for their brains. "Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses" really meant smart girls, bookish girls, mathletes, and science geeks. Times change. Now who doesn't love eyewear. Now how common is it to hear a man boast about his attraction to smart women. Or, as one young actor recently shared: I've always felt that the sexiest women are the ones with the biggest brains. At which I confess I rolled my eyes so hard that I had to toss my head to get them to come down again.

It cannot possibly be true, can it, the story about Toscanini losing patience during a rehearsal with a soprano, grabbing her large breasts and crying, If only these were brains!

Later came "Men don't make passes at girls with fat asses."

I can see them, this man and this woman, at the department dinner that will surely follow the event, and which, because of who he is, will be a fine one, at one of the area's most expensive restaurants, and where it's likely they'll be seated next to each other. And of course the woman will be hoping for some intense conversation-no small talk-maybe even a bit of flirtation, but this will turn out to be not so easy given how his attention keeps straying to the far end of the table, to the grad student who's been assigned as his escort, responsible for shuttling him from place to place, including after tonight's dinner back to his hotel, and who, after just one glass of wine, is responding to his frequent glances with increasingly bold ones of her own.

It looks like it might be true. I googled it. According to some reports, though, he didn't actually grab the soprano's breasts but only pointed at them.

During the obligatory recitation of the speaker's accomplishments, the man lowers his gaze and assumes a grimace of discomfort in an affectation of modesty that I doubt fools anyone.

If grades had depended more on how much I absorbed from lectures than from studying texts I'd have failed out of school. I don't often lose concentration when I'm reading something or listening to a person converse, but talks of any kind have always given me trouble (the worst being authors reading from their own work). My mind starts wandering almost as soon as the speaker gets started. Also, this particular evening I was unusually distracted. I had spent all afternoon in the hospital with my friend. I was wrung out from watching her suffer, and from trying not to let my dismay at her condition get the better of me and become obvious to her. Dealing with illness: I've never been good at that, either.

So my mind wandered. It wandered right from the start. I lost the thread of the talk several times. But it hardly mattered, because the man's talk was based on a long article he had written for a magazine, and I had read the article when it came out. I had read it, and everyone I knew had read it. My friend in the hospital had read it. My guess was, most people in the audience had too. It occurred to me that at least some of them had come because they wanted to ask questions, to hear a discussion of what the man had to say, the substance of which they were already familiar with from the article. But the man had made the unusual decision not to take any questions. There was to be no discussion tonight. This, however, we wouldn't know until after he'd finished speaking.

It was all over, he said. He quoted another writer, translating from the French: Before man, the forest; after him, the desert. Whatever must be done to forestall catastrophe, whatever actions or sacrifices, it was now clear that humankind lacked the will, the collective will, to undertake them. To any intelligent alien, he said, we would appear to be in the grip of a death wish.

It was over, he said again. No more the faith and consolation that had sustained generations and generations, the knowledge that, though our own individual time on earth must end, what we loved and what had meaning for us would go on, the world of which we had been a part would endure-that time had ended, he said. Our world and our civilization would not endure, he said. We must live and die in this new knowledge.

Our world and our civilization would not endure, the man said, because they could not survive the many forces we ourselves had set against it. We, our own worst enemy, had set ourselves up like sitting ducks, not only allowing weapons capable of killing us all many times over to be created but also for them to land in the hands of egomaniacs, nihilists, men without empathy, without conscience. Between our failure to control the spread of WMDs and our failure to keep from power those for whom their use was not only thinkable but perhaps even an irresistible temptation, apocalyptic war was becoming increasingly likely. . . .

When we go, the man said, pretty as it might be to think so, we will not be replaced by a race of noble and intelligent apes. Comforting, perhaps, to imagine that, with humans extinct, the planet might have a chance. Alas, the animal kingdom was doomed, he said. Though none of the evil would be of their making, the apes and all the other creatures were doomed along with us-those that human activity would not have annihilated already, that is.

But say there was no nuclear threat, the man said. Say, by some miracle, the world's entire nuclear arsenal had been pulverized overnight. Would we not still be faced with the perils that generations of human stupidity, shortsightedness, and capacity for self-delusion had produced . . .

The fossil fuel industrialists, the man said. How many were they, how many were we? It beggared belief that we, a free people, citizens of a democracy, had failed to stop them, had failed to stand up to these men and their political enablers working so assiduously at climate change denial. And to think that these same people had already reaped profits of billions, making them some of the richest people ever to have lived. But when the most powerful nation in the world took their side, swaggered to the very forefront of denial, what hope did Planet Earth have. That the masses of refugees fleeing shortages of food and clean water caused by global ecological disaster would find compassion anywhere their desperation drove them was absurd, the man said. On the contrary, we would soon see man's inhumanity to man on a scale like nothing that had ever been seen before.

The man was a good speaker. He had an iPad on the lectern in front of him, to which his gaze fell from time to time, but instead of reading straight from the text he spoke as though he'd memorized every line. In that way he was like an actor. A good actor. He was very good. Not once did he hesitate or stumble over a word, but nor did the talk come off as rehearsed. A gift. He spoke with authority and was nothing if not convincing, clearly sure of everything he said. As in the article I'd read and on which the talk was based, he supported his statements with numerous references. But there was also something about him that said that he didn't really care about being convincing. It was not a matter of opinion, what he said, it was irrefutable fact. It made no difference whether you believed him or not. This being the case, it struck me as odd, it struck me as really truly odd, his giving that talk. I had thought, because he was addressing people in the flesh, people who'd come out to hear him, that he would take a different tone from the one I remembered from the magazine article. I had thought that this time there'd be some, if not sanguine, at least not utterly doomster takeaway; a gesture, at least, to some possible way forward; a crumb, if only a crumb it be, of hope. As in, Now that I've got your attention, now that I've scared the bejesus out of you, let's talk about what might be done. Otherwise, why talk to us at all, sir? This, I was sure, was what other people in the audience must also have been feeling.

Cyberterrorism. Bioterrorism. The inevitable next great flu pandemic, for which we were, just as inevitably, unprepared. Incurable killer infections borne of our indiscriminate use of antibiotics. The rise of far-right regimes around the world. The normalization of propaganda and deceit as political strategy and basis for government policy. The inability to defeat global jihadism. Threats to life and liberty-to anything worthy of the name civilization-were flourishing, the man said. In short supply, on the other hand, were the means to combat them. . . .

And who could believe that the concentration of such vast power in the hands of a few tech corporations-not to mention the system for mass surveillance on which their dominance and profits depended-could be in humanity's future best interests. Who could seriously doubt that these companies' tools might one day become the most amazingly effective means to the most ruthless imaginable ends. Yet how helpless we were before our tech gods and masters, the man said. It was a good question, he said: Just how many more opioids could Silicon Valley come up with before it was all over. What would life be like when the system ensured that the individual no longer even had the option to say no to being followed everywhere and constantly shouted at and poked like an animal in a cage. Again, how had a supposedly freedom-loving people allowed this to happen? Why were people not outraged by the very idea of surveillance capitalism? Scared right out of their wits by Big Tech? An alien one day studying our collapse might well conclude: Freedom was too much for them. They would rather be slaves.

A person who only read the man's words, rather than hearing and watching him speak, would probably have imagined him quite different from the way he actually was that night. Given the words, the meaning, the horrific facts, a person would probably imagine some show of emotion. Not these calm, cadenced sentences. Not this dispassionate mask. Only once did I catch a flicker of feeling: when he was talking about the animals, a slight catch in his throat. For humans, there seemed to be no pity in him. From time to time as he spoke, he looked out over the lectern and raked the audience with his raptor's gaze. Later, I thought I understood why he hadn't wanted to take questions. Have you ever been at a Q&A where at least one person did not make some thoughtless remark or ask the kind of irrelevant question that suggested that they hadn't been listening to a thing the speaker just said? I could see how, for this speaker, after this talk, something like that would have been unendurable. Maybe he was afraid he'd lose his temper. Because of course it was there: Beneath the cool, the control, you could sense it. Deep and volcanic emotion. Which, were he to allow himself to express it, would spew out of the top of his head and burn us all to ash.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riverhead Books; First Edition (September 8, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593191412
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593191415
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.3 x 0.83 x 8.3 inches
#876 in Friendship Fiction (Books)
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About the author

Sigrid nunez.

Sigrid Nunez was born in New York City, the daughter of a German mother and a Chinese-Panamanian father, whose lives she drew on for part of her first novel, A FEATHER ON THE BREATH OF GOD (1995). She went on to write six more novels, including THE LAST OF HER KIND (2006), SALVATION CITY (2010), THE FRIEND (2018), and WHAT ARE YOU GOING THROUGH (September, 2020). She is also the author of SEMPRE SUSAN: A MEMOIR OF SUSAN SONTAG (2011). Her honors include a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize, a Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages. Learn more at www.sigridnunez.com.

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BookBrowse Reviews What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez

What Are You Going Through

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First Published:
Sep 8, 2020, 224 pages
Sep 2021, 224 pages

Literary Fiction
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Dealing with Loss
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An intense intellectual wander through matters of life and death.

Shortly into What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez, it becomes clear that the narrator is unreliable or, at the very least, absentminded; she has misled the reader by failing to mention a significant connection she has to another character. What additional details might she be withholding? This question becomes less consequential as the book winds on. The unnamed main character may conceal facts and approach the stories of others with marked bias, but what she shares soon begins to feel more important than what she doesn't, and the limits of her subjectivity begin to seem like the point. If the novel is about any one thing, it is the narrator's experience of becoming involved in the end-of-life plans of a friend who has terminal cancer, but there are many detours along this main path. Like Nunez's National Book Award-winning novel The Friend , What Are You Going Through opts out of linear storytelling and follows the whims and quirks of its primary character's mind, sometimes striking out on tangents within tangents in a style that bears similarities to that of Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy. The narrator seriously ponders her friend's condition, but she also takes the time to listen to a story told by a cat, describe the plot of a crime novel she finds in an Airbnb lodging and attend a dismal lecture about the state of the world. Events and reflections like these come together to reveal the character indirectly through her perceptions and interactions, transcending the borders of her perspective to give the reader a more complete picture of her. The book's tendency to go down rabbit holes may be initially disconcerting for some, but its digressions are by turns conversational, humorous and philosophically engrossing. Just as secondary characters work to reveal the primary one, tangential preoccupations ranging from gender politics to aging and beauty to climate change eventually form the shape of what remains to be addressed: the probing question of how to exist in the midst of death — how to witness the death of a friend, the death of the planet — while still living life with any sense of purpose. Through this question and the narrator's clearly limited point of view, Nunez's novel also focuses on communication and the realities people represent for one another. The title of the book is taken from the work of French philosopher Simone Weil (see Beyond the Book ) — according to Weil, loving one's neighbor hinges on the ability to ask, "Quel est ton tourment?" or "What are you going through?" This question stands more or less as the antithesis of the obligatory American "How are you?" to which the expected response is a rote "Fine, how are you?" In keeping with Weil's encouragement towards meaningful connection, the unexpected bond the narrator forms with her friend during her illness bypasses customary social evasions and opens the way to a deeper examination of human relationships. The book's most touching and striking element is its depiction of the intensity produced in situations where time is precious. Towards the end of the novel, the narrator mentions a book she is reading that compares watching someone die to falling in love. The two events seem to mesh in her mind as she considers her feelings about observing her friend's final days:

Jesus, you know, it wasn't supposed to happen like this. Even if it strikes me now as having been inevitable. But doesn't love always feel just so: destined, no matter how unexpected, no matter how improbable.

While there is nothing new in connecting love with death, Nunez's writing succeeds in capturing the strange, startling illumination both can bring. It also draws attention to how people sometimes diminish profound life experiences by corralling them into narrow ideas of beauty and romance. What Are You Going Through suggests that this diminishment may be overcome by a genuine curiosity about and interest in other human beings. As the narrator points out at one stage, Weil's question "What are you going through?" reads differently in the original French. She doesn't elaborate, but a literal translation of "Quel est ton tourment?" produces a question arguably even more generous and intimate, matching the generous and intimate tone of Nunez's novel: "What is your torment?"

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Beyond the Book: Simone Weil (1909-1943)

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A peek inside and walk through the Great Jack-O’Lantern Blaze: What to expect

The Great Jack-O’-Lantern Blaze got off to a gord-geous start last weekend.

On Friday the 13 th , the Historic Hudson Valley’s annual Halloween event kicked off its 2024 season with jack-o'-lanterns made from over 9,000 pumpkins intricately carved and placed into elaborate structures. Twilight created the perfect backdrop as guests lined up just before 7:30 p.m.

Since the Blaze has a reputation as one of the area’s biggest and brightest activities of the season, we headed out to Van Cortlandt Manor on the opening night of its 20th year to see what this experience is all about.

Walk through The Great Jack-O’-Lantern Blaze

I arrived while the sun was still out. But as nightfall hit, what seemed like a series of creatively carved jack-o’-lanterns was transformed into a vast land of twinkling lights and thoughtful scenes as far as I could see.

I was transported to the Netherlands by a Dutch lighthouse surrounded by tulips. I stood in a sea of jellyfish, then crossed a jack-o’-lantern overpass that looked suspiciously similar to the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge. I felt like I was fishing on the Hudson, surrounded by sea creatures. Then I gazed at the stars in a pumpkin-fied planetarium, an experience I can only describe as breathtaking.

There was a MoMA-inspired art museum with pumpkin versions of famous works like "The Scream" and the "Mona Lisa." There was also a vignette of the Headless Horseman and a moving merry-go-round made by William Dentzel, a descendant of one of the country's first carousel makers.

These pieces were favorites of Yonkers resident Keri Jenkins, and her family visiting from Los Angeles.

“It sparks the Halloween tradition," Jenkins said when asked about the experience. "It's something for everyone because it's a little spooky, but not scary."

Next on the path was The Gourd & Goblet Tavern , new this year to Blaze. The Tavern provides visitors with Halloween-themed bites in a historical space that was once an inn for travelers making stops along Albany Post Road. Visitors can choose between a pumpkin or vegetable empanada, a non-alcoholic beverage or cocktail in a souvenir cup and a sweet treat to go. (The Tavern experience requires an additional admission fee. Read on for more details.)

Then I giggled at a scene of New York City, so detailed that it had its very own Pizza Rat, and saw the Van Cortlandt home itself, adorned with accompanying pumpkin gravestones, carved with the names of real Van Cortlandt family members who once lived at the estate.

"This year, the house is my favorite," said Michael Natiello, Blaze's creative director . “We kind of went a little old school on this. And this is the original design from the first year of pumpkin placement -- with a little more embellishment and better, more evolved lighting techniques."

‘Amazing,’ ‘magical,’ ‘beautiful’: What visitors thought about Blaze

Opening night did not disappoint. One visitor, Jo-Ellen Askew, called the experience “amazing.”

“You can’t believe the art and the work that goes into creating all these pumpkins and the vignettes,” said Askew, a Somers resident who was attending Blaze with her daughter, nephew and grandchildren. “I’ve been here before, many years ago. There is 10 times more to see."

Kelly Lynch of Pleasantville fawned over the experience. She and her sister, mom, aunt, brother, cousins visiting from the Philippines and numerous other family members attended Blaze together. Each loved a different installation, noting their favorites as the Statue of Liberty, the Kraken emerging from the Croton River — a new installation for 2024 — and Blaze's resident alicorn (also known as a unicorn with wings).

“It was so magical! Even as an adult," Lynch said. "It was extremely enjoyable, fun, lighthearted. It was beautiful.”

What to know if you go to the Great Jack-O’-Lantern Blaze

When: There are two locations of the Great Jack-O'-Lantern Blaze, one in Hudson Valley and one on Long Island. Hudson Valley Blaze is open on select dates from September 13 to November 17. Long Island Blaze is open on select dates from October 4 to November 3.

Where: Hudson Valley Blaze is located at Van Cortlandt Manor, 525 South Riverside Avenue, Croton-On-Hudson. Long Island Blaze is located at the Old Bethpage Village Restoration, 1303 Round Swamp Road, Old Bethpage.

Cost: Ticket prices vary. A standard ticket begins at $20 per adult and $20 per child over the age of 2. Children under the age of 2 are free. The Gourd & Goblet Tavern experience requires an additional admission fee.

For tickets and more information: Check out hudsonvalley.org or pumpkinblaze.org .

Why You Should Read More Books That Make You Cry

Nicholas sparks on emotions, faith, and his latest novel, "counting miracles.".

Posted September 16, 2024 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

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Researchers have found that crying can be cathartic.
As we get older, we tend to cry more often for positive reasons.
Nicholas Sparks shares his thoughts on emotions, faith, and his latest novel, "Counting Miracles."

Nicholas Sparks’ books have been making readers cry since The Notebook was released in 1996, and millions are hooked by the emotional draw of his novels. Many readers just can’t help but cry at the heartfelt, sometimes tragic, endings that tug at their heartstrings.

But what if reading novels that make you cry is actually good for your mental health?

Researchers have discovered that there are numerous benefits of having a good cry—some have found that it can be cathartic, making space for built-up emotions to find release. This is particularly the case for adults who are not struggling with depression , a crisis, or an unsupportive social circle (Bylsma, Vingerhoets, & Rottenberg, 2008). As we get older, we tend to cry more often for positive reasons, being soulfully touched by instances of altruism , compassion, and empathy in society (Vingerhoets and Bylsma, 2016).

Source: Brad Poirier / Used with permission

Sparks agrees: “Crying can provide cathartic and healthy benefits,” he said in an interview with Psychology Today . “I’ll add that research shows that it can also lower stress in the aftermath. I’m not, however, saying that all of my novels will do such a thing—I have written novels with what I consider to be happy endings—but I believe that the evocation of genuine emotion , including sadness, is a critical aspect of any good, or great, novel.”

While research shows that women shed more tears than men, Sparks posits that men are no less emotional—tears or not (Vingerhoets and Scheirs, 2000).

Q: Research shows that men cry less than women in most cultures, and the lack of gender differences in crying behavior in babies and toddlers suggests that this is due to societal expectations. Do you ever find yourself getting emotional in the process of writing emotionally charged scenes? Do you have any tips for other men who might feel uncomfortable tapping into their emotions?

NS: In the past, there have been moments when emotions have forced me to push away from the keyboard for a while. A Walk to Remember was inspired by my sister’s battle with cancer while The Rescue was inspired by my son, and I had to draw on my own emotional, sometimes heart-wrenching, experiences when trying to make particular scenes come to life. There were tears in my eyes, and I simply needed a break before plunging back into the story. In Counting Miracles , there were portions of Jasper’s story that also moved me deeply, especially his past.

As for men tapping into their emotions, perhaps I’m in the minority, but I think men experience emotions in much the same way that women do. If I’m allowed to stereotype, however, the behavior associated with those emotions can sometimes differ. I remember, for instance, at my father’s funeral—it was a car accident or unexpected death—my sister was a wreck. She was sobbing and leaning on others for support. I, however, may have struck someone as much more stoic, if sadness was solely measured by tears. But I can assure you that I was emotionally hurting, and brokenhearted, in the same way she was.

Q: In Counting Miracles , Kaitlyn, Tanner, and Jasper are all grappling with the unexpected turns their lives have taken, the circumstances beyond their control that have shaped their lives. Do you think counting miracles—looking for glimmers of purpose and hope in the midst of life’s challenges—has the power to help us make meaning out of the haphazard, at times tragic, and sometimes serendipitous, events in our lives?

NS: Because we’re human, it is sometimes impossible to find meaning in tragedy or loss that makes sense to us. How can one find any sort of sense of meaning in the sudden death of an infant, or children with cancer, or tragic, unexpected deaths of a parent or a sibling or a husband or a wife? Faith allows us the ability to believe that there is a greater meaning to everything, even if we accept that we still don’t understand it. With that said, counting miracles—or, said another way, finding reasons to be grateful—will, without question, benefit mental health. Per my own research into the matter, those people that feel gratitude regularly also tend to feel more inner peace.

Q: In your book, Jasper is a good man who has been through so much trauma and hardship throughout his life. Through it all, he finds himself wrestling with his long-held Christian beliefs. What role has faith played in navigating your own life’s struggles?

NS: Faith has played, and continues to play, a huge role in my life. I pray at least half an hour daily, and I find that it not only connects me to God and Christ, but in the aftermath, I feel a sense of inner peace. Prayer seems to strengthen my ability to accept the challenges as they come, to forgive others, and to feel gratitude for all the wonderful people I’ve known in my life. With acceptance, forgiveness , and gratitude comes a greater ability to navigate challenges in life.

Q: There is ample evidence to support Tanner’s assertion that “good mental health requires spending time in nature on a regular basis.” How do you incorporate time in nature into your routine for better mental health? What are your favorite places to spend time outdoors?

NS: I’m outside every morning with my dog as we take our walks, and because I live in such a lovely area of the country, I’m outside most afternoons or evenings as well. I think it’s important to spend time outside. As far as my favorite places, I particularly enjoy panoramic vistas, whether it be someplace like the Grand Canyon, or at the beach, or on a safari in Africa, or amid the glaciers of Patagonia. The beauty of nature brings to mind a sense of wonder, and I think life should be filled with wonder as much as possible.

Q: What do you hope stays with readers long after finishing Counting Miracles ?

NS: I simply hope they remember, and adore, the story and the characters for a long, long time.

Bylsma, L. M., Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., & Rottenberg, J. (2008). When is crying cathartic? An international study. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 27(10), 1165–1187. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2008.27.10.1165

Vingerhoets AJJM, Bylsma LM. The Riddle of Human Emotional Crying: A Challenge for Emotion Researchers. Emot Rev. 2016 Jul;8(3):207–217. doi: 10.1177/1754073915586226. Epub 2015 May 28. PMID: 30854025; PMCID: PMC6402489.

Vingerhoets A. J. J. M., Scheirs J. (2000). Sex differences in crying: empirical findings and possible explanations. In: Gender and Emotion: Social Psychological Perspectives. ed. Fischer A. H. (Cambridge: University Press; ), 143–166.

Heather Rose Artushin, LISW-CP, is a child and family therapist passionate about the power of reading.

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The Wisdom of Sheep , by Rosamund Young (Penguin) . This meditative book reflects on more than four decades of living and working at Kite’s Nest, an organic farm in the Cotswolds, in England. Though Young acknowledges the “unremitting hard work” involved in farming, her anecdotes emphasize its pleasures: the welcome from her herd of sheep after she’s been away; the sight of a field full of frogs, signifying a healthy ecosystem. The farm’s cows, chickens, cats, and sheep “are all individuals with incredibly varied personalities.” Indeed, her stories show them to be subtly emotive—recalcitrant, helpful, blithe, astute. One hen, locked out of the house by mistake, leaps onto the windowsill “and pulls faces at me as I wash the dishes, forcing me to run to the door with profuse apologies.”

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Book Review: Raymond Antrobus transitions into fatherhood in his poetry collection 'Signs, Music'

Raymond Antrobus’ third poetry collection is about his transition into fatherhood

Becoming a parent is life changing. Raymond Antrobus’ third poetry collection, “Signs, Music," captures this transformation as he conveys his own transition into fatherhood.

The book is split between before and after, moving from the hope and trepidation of shepherding a new life into the world to the sleeplessness and shifted perspective of being a new father.

Antrobus offers glimpses into his childhood as he considers his father, wondering what effect he might have on his own parenting. He reveals his guilt when he pushes responsibilities to his partner. He pens delicate, simple poems that reflect his baby’s joy at discovering life’s wonders. And he employs one of literature’s favorite motifs, the bird, to gratifying effect.

With an English mother and Jamaican father, Antrobus and his writing come from a place of colonialism, legacy and impractical standards, where Deaf students are assessed “on what they can’t say instead of what they can,” as he says during a powerful recitation featured on his webpage .

From Oklahoma to London, Hebrew to Sanskrit, the King James Bible to William Wordsworth’s daffodil poem , the setting and context add entire dimensions to the collection.

Art is what you make of it, and there are a lot of ways to interpret Antrobus' collection, starting with the title. I went into the book with the surface understanding, surmising “signs” referred to the signals of impending parenthood and “music” the celebratory result. But pretty quickly, the literal meaning takes prominence: signs used for communication as in British Sign Language, and sounds that bear melody and evoke feeling.

My favorite poem is the last, largely because it ends with the line, “Signs, Music,” coming full circle back to the title. In doing so, Antrobus recontextualizes the collection, further deepening its meaning by placing everything in a new perspective.

At under 100 pages, “Signs, Music” seems like a quick read, but I found myself re-reading and basking in my favorite lines. Antrobus is a stunning live performer of his poetry, in part due to his lyricism and musicality that force you to slow down and enjoy the sounds.

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Braving Difficult Decisions: What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do

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If you are feeling unsettled, unfulfilled, or undone, welcome. If you are at a crossroads or in crisis and need guidance, this book is for you. If you have a big transition to make or a tough question to answer, and you are wondering how you are going to figure this out, help is at hand. Braving Difficult Decisions is a pathbreaking synthesis of spiritual insight and practical wisdom that cuts through the thicket of uncertainty toward a future you can fully embrace. Drawing from her own experience with difficult decisions and in conversation with spiritual leaders, historical figures, and everyday folks, Rev. Dr. Angela Gorrell maps out a process for working through the most challenging aspects of complex choices, listening to God and others, naming emerging possibilities, and choosing a wise way forward that you can return to time and time again as you face new challenges. Angela will help you engage your questions with less anxiety and more interest, wonder, and creativity. As you move, you will learn how to trust God, yourself, and the process. Angela explains, “My goal is not that you reach the same decisions as me or the other people featured in this book, but that you learn how to take your own journey into and through difficult decisions.” You are being led, not just by the wisdom of the stories others have lived, but by the God who made the sun and the moon and the stars. You are not forgotten. You are not alone. And you are braver than you think.

Product Details

Title : Braving Difficult Decisions: What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do
Author : Angela Williams Gorrell
Publisher : Eerdmans
Print Publication Date: 2025
Logos Release Date: 2024
Language : English
Resources: 1
Format : Digital › Ebook
ISBNs : 9781467467964 , 9780802883971 , 0802883974 , 1467467960
Resource ID: LLS:9781467467964
Resource Type: Monograph
Metadata Last Updated: 2024-09-13T01:05:00Z

About Angela Williams Gorrell

Angela Williams (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is assistant professor of practical theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University, in Waco, Texas. She previously served as associate research scholar for metrics and evaluation, field development, and public engagement at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School, where she worked on the Theology of Joy and the Good Life project with Miroslav Volf. Gorrell researches, writes, leads workshops, trains, and consults regarding the relationship between new media culture, joy, and visions of the good life.

COMMENTS

Review: 'What Are You Going Through,' By Sigrid Nunez : NPR
Attachment Brings Joy, And Inevitably, Loss In 'What Are You Going Through'. Sigrid Nunez is on a roll. She's tapped into a smart, wry voice which feels right for our times, as do her concerns ...
What Are You Going Through
It's an awkward and often doomed endeavor without clean lines—that is, unless you are Sigrid Nunez. Her 2018 National Book Award-winning novel, The Friend, was about the aftermath of a death; her highly anticipated follow-up novel, What Are You Going Through, masterfully depicts a death as it is happening. The book is a transitive space, a ...
Sigrid Nunez's New Book Asks a Timely Question, Right in the Title
By Sigrid Nunez. Reading Sigrid Nunez's absorbing new novel is somewhat akin to having a long conversation with someone who is telling you something very important, but is telling it in a very ...
WHAT ARE YOU GOING THROUGH
Dryly funny and deeply tender; draining and worth it. A woman is enlisted to help a dying friend commit suicide in Nunez's latest novel, which—true to form—is short, sharp, and quietly brutal. Nunez returns to many of the topics she mined in The Friend, which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2018: the meaning of life, the nature ...
Sigrid Nunez Follows 'The Friend' With a ...
"What Are You Going Through" is Nunez's follow-up to "The Friend," which won a National Book Award in 2018. That novel had a big dog on the front. That novel had a big dog on the front ...
Review: What Are You Going Through
Riverhead. "I went to hear a man give a talk," writes Sigrid Nunez '72BC, '75SOA in the opening sentence of her new novel, What Are You Going Through. Like much of her prose, the line is simple and direct. But readers should not be fooled by the straightforward tone; Nunez's seventh novel is stunningly complex, a nuanced, layered look ...
'What Are You Going Through' by Sigrid Nunez book review
Sigrid Nunez's 'What Are You Going Through' is an ambitious novel about the meaning of life and death. Review by Joan Frank. September 16, 2020 at 12:32 p.m. EDT. "Be kind, for everyone ...
Book Review
What Are You Going Through (Riverhead Books) by National Book Award winner Sigrid Nunez is a perfect follow-up to her previous novel, The Friend, where a woman's friend passes away and she takes on the responsibility of her dog. In Nunez's latest novel, empathy is the focus when this narrator's friend, who has cancer, asks if they could ...
'What Are You Going Through' review: Sigrid Nunez observes death
National Book Award-winner Sigrid Nunez's latest novel, "What Are You Going Through" (Riverhead, 224 pp., ★★★½ out of four), doesn't claim to have all the answers. Instead, it just asks ...
What Are You Going Through
What Are You Going Through is a 2020 novel by the American writer Sigrid Nunez published by Riverhead Books in 2020. ... Overall, the novel received mostly positive reviews, according to literary review aggregator website Book Marks. [3] Heller McAlpin, writing for NPR, praised the novel as a " ...
What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez: Summary and Reviews
Someday, Maybe is a stunning, witty debut novel about a young woman's emotional journey through unimaginable loss, pulled along by her tight-knit Nigerian family, a posse of friends, and the love and laughter she shared with her husband. We have 11 read-alikes for What Are You Going Through, but non-members are limited to two results.
What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez
The title of the book, cribbed from the French philosopher Simone Weil, who wrote 'Quel est donc ton tourment?" is a reminder that somebody somewhere is always going through something, and ...
What Are You Going Through
About What Are You Going Through. THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY NPR, PEOPLE, AND O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF 2020 THE INSPIRATION FOR THE FEATURE FILM BY PEDRO ALMODOVAR THE ROOM NEXT DOOR, STARRING JULIANNE MOORE AND TILDA SWINTON "As good as The Friend, if not better."—The New York Times ...
'What Are You Going Through,' from National Book Award winner Nunez, is
Book review. Sigrid Nunez's "What You Are Going Through" (out Sept. 8) is a short novel, but it doesn't leave you feeling shortchanged.In fact, quite the opposite — especially if you ...
Sigrid Nunez Wants To Know: 'What Are You Going Through?'
Author Sigrid Nunez has a new book called "What Are You Going Through." Her narrator, a writer and a teacher, tells stories by tracing conversations and encounters with her friends and even her cat.
What Are You Going Through
Throughout the book, she mostly just listens, commenting on any observations she has. I respect the novel's premise. Neighborly love is defined here as being able to ask someone what they are going through. The narrator lends people her ears when they have something they need to get off their chest.
'What Are You Going Through' by Sigrid Nunez
A book of two halves. What Are You Going Through is a book of two halves. In the first, Nunez takes her time to build up the idea that all people really want out of life is to be noticed, to be seen, for others to understand what they are going through. And in the second, she recounts what happens when the narrator and her friend rent an Airbnb ...
What Are You Going Through
"What Are You Going Through considers what it means to die well . . . . But as with The Friend, the book's appeal lies less in the plot, such as it is, than in the wandering thoughts and insightful observations that it sets off." The Economist "This is not a book about empathy so much as respect for the unknowable . . . .
Through Thoughtful Storytelling, Sigrid Nunez asks the question…What
My Review: What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez is a perfect follow up to her previous book, The Friend, where a woman's friend passes away and she takes on the responsibility of her dog. In Nunez's latest novel, empathy is the focus when this narrator's friend, who has cancer, asks if they could go away on vacation together.
What Are You Going Through: A Novel Hardcover
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY NPR, PEOPLE, AND O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF 2020 NATIONAL BESTSELLER "As good as The Friend, if not better."— The New York Times "Impossible to put down . . . leavened with wit and tenderness." — People "I was dazed by the novel's grace." — The New Yorker The New York Times- bestselling, National Book Award ...
Review of What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez
If the novel is about any one thing, it is the narrator's experience of becoming involved in the end-of-life plans of a friend who has terminal cancer, but there are many detours along this main path. Like Nunez's National Book Award-winning novel The Friend, What Are You Going Through opts out of linear storytelling and follows the whims and ...
What Are You Going Through
What Are You Going Through gets at its central action—itself deferred—slowly, circling it by way of these other encounters. One might want to compare the book's conversation-heavy structure to Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy. But the Outline books are cold and austere, organized around a reticent observer whose judgments are nonetheless ...
Inside the Great Jack-O'Lantern Blaze: What you will see
Walk through The Great Jack-O'-Lantern Blaze. I arrived while the sun was still out. But as nightfall hit, what seemed like a series of creatively carved jack-o'-lanterns was transformed into ...
Why You Should Read More Books That Make You Cry
Q: In your book, Jasper is a good man who has been through so much trauma and hardship throughout his life. Through it all, he finds himself wrestling with his long-held Christian beliefs.
Briefly Noted Book Reviews
The book alternates between chapters about the boy as he attempts to recover an important lost package and about the people he runs into along the way—an insecure ex-boyfriend, a cancer survivor ...
What we know about Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspect in the apparent ...
Routh also mentioned Trump in his book, which appears on Amazon without a publisher listed, and is titled "Ukraine's Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the ...
Book Review: Raymond Antrobus transitions into fatherhood in his poetry
The book is split between before and after, moving from the hope and trepidation of shepherding a new life into the world to the sleeplessness and shifted perspective of being a new father.
Braving Difficult Decisions: What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do
If you are feeling unsettled, unfulfilled, or undone, welcome. If you are at a crossroads or in crisis and need guidance, this book is for you. If you have a big transition to make or a tough question to answer, and you are wondering how you are going to figure this out, help is at hand. Braving Difficult Decisions is a pathbreaking synthesis of spiritual insight and practical wisdom that cuts ...

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Sigrid Nunez Follows ‘The Friend’ With a Sorrowful, Funny Novel About Death

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An intense intellectual wander through matters of life and death.

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