The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez

[Angela]

Goodreads synopsis:

When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatised by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.

While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unravelling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.

Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.

I read this for 2019’s Week 48: a book that was a National Book Award winner or finalist for any year (it won the 2018 award). Gosh. What an amazing read this was. An emotional tale about love and friendship of both the human and canine type (as well as the power of reading and writing), it was such a powerful novel. It’s relatively short, but not a single word goes to waste.

[Pam]

This was one of the first books I read in 2019 and I loved it!