Showing results by author "Sigrid Nunez" in All Categories

Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past.

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 traumatized 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.

A woman describes a series of encounters she has with various people in the ordinary course of her life: an ex she runs into by chance at a public forum, an Airbnb owner unsure how to interact with her guests, a stranger who seeks help comforting his elderly mother, a friend of her youth now hospitalized with terminal cancer. In each of these people, the woman finds a common need: the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience to their experiences.

In the summer of 1934, “a sickly, pathetic marmoset” called Mitz came into the care of Leonard Woolf. He nursed her back to health and from then on was rarely seen without her on his shoulder. A ubiquitous presence in Bloomsbury society, Mitz moved with Leonard and Virginia Woolf and their circle, developing special relationships with such associates as T. S. Eliot and Vita Sackville-West. She accompanied the Woolfs on their travels and even played an important role in helping them to escape a close call with Nazis in Germany.

Wie fühlt es sich an, jemandem einen Gefallen zu tun, der einen an die eigenen Grenzen bringt? Genau dies passiert der Protagonistin in "Was fehlt dir". Eine alte Jugendfreundin bittet sie, ihr beim Sterben zu helfen - ihr die Hand zu reichen, wenn sie sich mit Hilfe von Tabletten das Leben nimmt, um dem Tumor, der in ihrem Körper wütet, zuvorzukommen. Verwoben mit Geschichten von anderen Frauen, Geschichten über Freundschaft, Verlust und Einsamkeit schafft die Erzählerin ein Porträt der Menschlichkeit.

Als die Ich-Erzählerin, eine zurückgezogen in New York City lebende Schriftstellerin, ihren besten Freund verliert, bekommt sie überraschend dessen Hund vermacht. Apollo ist eine riesige Dogge, die achtzig Kilo wiegt. Ihr Apartment ist eigentlich viel zu klein für ihn, außerdem sind Hunde in ihrem Mietshaus gar nicht erlaubt. Aber irgendwie kann sie nicht Nein sagen und nimmt Apollo bei sich auf, der wie sie in tiefer Trauer ist. Stück für Stück finden die beiden gemeinsam zurück ins Leben. Ein Hörbuch über Liebe, Verlust und Freundschaft - und die tröstliche Verbindung zwischen Mensch und Hund.

After losing both parents to a flu pandemic that seriously threatens his own life as well, 13-year-old Cole Vining is sent to live with an evangelical pastor and his wife in Salvation City, a small town in southern Indiana. There, Cole feels sheltered and loved but never as if he truly belongs. Everything about his new home is vastly different from the secular world in which he was raised.

La narradora de esta historia es alguien que sabe escuchar, porque entiende que todo el mundo necesita ser escuchado, y esa virtud será fundamental en la situación que va a tener que afrontar. Y es que en el centro de esta novela hay dos amigas. Y una enfermedad. La narradora visita en el hospital a una amiga que padece un cáncer terminal y decide instalarse con ella en su casa para acompañarla en sus últimos días. Las dos conversan, ven películas, leen, recuerdan la infancia, ríen y hablan de sus complicadas y no siempre satisfactorias relaciones personales.

La protagonista y narradora de esta novela es una escritora neoyorquina que pierde de forma inesperada a su gran amigo y mentor, y de forma no menos inesperada se ve obligada a hacerse cargo de su perro –un enorme y artrítico gran danés–, que se ha quedado solo y traumatizado por la súbita desaparición de su amo. La protagonista no tendrá otro remedio que llevárselo a su minúsculo apartamento, arriesgándose a que la echen porque en el edificio está prohibido tener animales.