Man's Best Friend

I had an entirely different theme for the week than I'm going to be using.  I was gong to go on more of a naturalist bent and look at environmentalism and these huge open spaces that make you feel like you're communing with whatever higher power you believe in.  I'll get back to it, but not this month.  My plan changed when, on Friday, I went down to the business center in my building to pick up the package that had my fixed Kindle in it.  I get the Literary Box from Quarterly Co., but I didn't get my address changed quickly enough, so all of the shipping information had my old address.  I had no indication that my box was sent to the right place, and I was bummed.  But when I went down to get my package, I found that my Literary box was there too!  The think about these boxes is that they're curated by the author of the main release that they're promoting.

The main release of this box is The Friend by Sigrid Nunez.  It changed my theme to look at human's interactions with man's best friend: Dogs.  I have two cats myself, Killian and Lucy, but I do love dogs.  I grew up with dogs.  Dogs (and some cats!) become one of the best people in your life.  I remember reading something at one point that it's important to remember that while pets are a part of your life, you are their life.  I'll have my cats until the pass, I I couldn't be happier.  However, in The Friend, the main character's friend has committed suicide, leaving behind a Great Dane that he had adopted.  Wife Three asked the narrator to take the dog, because she doesn't want it.  (None of the characters are named, except the dog.)  Apollo, the Great Dane, is struggling with the loss of the man who took him in.

While this book seems like it's a novel about a woman who takes in a dog, the writing style is interesting.  It's told in first person, but it's as if the narrator is talking to the man who died, like a long, extended oral tale.  We learn things about the narrator's life, like that her friendship with the deceased started when he was her teacher.  Or that she has worked with victims of human trafficking.  It seems like a series of vignettes, but it's difficult to discern a method to them.  Which is a style that works.  For instance, early in the book, it's mentioned that not only are the narrator and the teacher former student and teacher, but that they've slept together.  About two thirds of the way through there's a vignette on sexual harassment in academia and the narrator seeing another teacher start, she is sure, a relationship with a student.  There doesn't seem to be much about Apollo.  I was expecting more adventures of a 185 lb dog in a small Manhattan apartment.

If I'm being honest, there are moments where the book makes me uncomfortable for reasons that I can't even explain, which I'm sure the main character would enjoy.  I'm definitely curious to read some of Ms. Nunez's other books, because I'm curious about this style of writing.  I definitely don't think it's something that I could do.  This book, despite it's ability to make you uncomfortable, also seems soothing, in a strange way.  It's a cathartic release for the narrator, it seems, and even when you can't connect to the individual story, it feels the same for me as a reader.

Another thing I love about the Literary Box that I get--the book is peppered with post it notes that Ms. Nunez has written about the book, the writing process, and about her personal connection with the story.  While they can interrupt the flow of reading sometimes (I've started taking them off the pages when I come to them and then reading them when I get to a section break before sticking them back on the page they come from), they deepen the experience.  I love the connection to the author, even if I've never read anything from her before.  Which I haven't!