What Are You Going Through: A Novel
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
“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–winning author of The Friend brings her singular voice to a story about the meaning of life and death, and the value of companionship
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. The narrator orchestrates this chorus of voices for the most part as a passive listener, until one of them makes an extraordinary request, drawing her into an intense and transformative experience of her own.
In What Are You Going Through, Nunez brings wisdom, humor, and insight to a novel about human connection and the changing nature of relationships in our times. A surprising story about empathy and the unusual ways one person can help another through hardship, her book offers a moving and provocative portrait of the way we live now.
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
“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–winning author of The Friend brings her singular voice to a story about the meaning of life and death, and the value of companionship
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. The narrator orchestrates this chorus of voices for the most part as a passive listener, until one of them makes an extraordinary request, drawing her into an intense and transformative experience of her own.
In What Are You Going Through, Nunez brings wisdom, humor, and insight to a novel about human connection and the changing nature of relationships in our times. A surprising story about empathy and the unusual ways one person can help another through hardship, her book offers a moving and provocative portrait of the way we live now.
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Community Reviews
thenextgoodbook.com
What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez
210 pages
What’s it about?
This slim novel chronicles the ordinary events of one woman's life as she narrates them to the reader. Along the way she visits a friend who is dying, goes to a lecture that leaves little hope for future generations, thinks about what makes a great writer, and enjoys the solitude of nature. Her observations are thoughtful and quiet.
What did it make me think about?
Friendship, love, connection, death, and climate change. Along with another theme I have read before- can writing do justice to the human experience? "Understood: language would end up falsifying everything, as language always does. Writers know this only too well, they know it better than anyone else, and that is why the good ones sweat and bleed over their sentences, the best ones break themselves into pieces over their sentences, because if there is any truth to be found they believe it will be found there. Those writers who feel that the way they write is more important than whatever they may write about- these are the only writers I want to read anymore, the only ones who can lift me up."
Should I read it?
This was a short, beautiful novel. It is written in such a quiet way, and yet has so much to say about the human experience. I just finished Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar and while his novel seemed written in bold type- this book was quite the opposite. Each writer seems to have matched their writing style to the message they were trying to impart. It was interesting to read these books back to back. I would definitely recommend both books. I plan to go back and read previous works from Sigrid Nunez.
Quote-
"I think it's largely true, what I once heard a famous playwright say, that there are no truly stupid human beings, no uninteresting human lives, and that you'd discover this if you were willing to sit and listen to people. But sometimes you had to be willing to sit for a very long time."
If you liked this try-
Driftless by David Rhodes
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet
Levels of Life by Julian Barnes
What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez
210 pages
What’s it about?
This slim novel chronicles the ordinary events of one woman's life as she narrates them to the reader. Along the way she visits a friend who is dying, goes to a lecture that leaves little hope for future generations, thinks about what makes a great writer, and enjoys the solitude of nature. Her observations are thoughtful and quiet.
What did it make me think about?
Friendship, love, connection, death, and climate change. Along with another theme I have read before- can writing do justice to the human experience? "Understood: language would end up falsifying everything, as language always does. Writers know this only too well, they know it better than anyone else, and that is why the good ones sweat and bleed over their sentences, the best ones break themselves into pieces over their sentences, because if there is any truth to be found they believe it will be found there. Those writers who feel that the way they write is more important than whatever they may write about- these are the only writers I want to read anymore, the only ones who can lift me up."
Should I read it?
This was a short, beautiful novel. It is written in such a quiet way, and yet has so much to say about the human experience. I just finished Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar and while his novel seemed written in bold type- this book was quite the opposite. Each writer seems to have matched their writing style to the message they were trying to impart. It was interesting to read these books back to back. I would definitely recommend both books. I plan to go back and read previous works from Sigrid Nunez.
Quote-
"I think it's largely true, what I once heard a famous playwright say, that there are no truly stupid human beings, no uninteresting human lives, and that you'd discover this if you were willing to sit and listen to people. But sometimes you had to be willing to sit for a very long time."
If you liked this try-
Driftless by David Rhodes
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet
Levels of Life by Julian Barnes
Really good book, there are some quite poignant quotes that takes you out of the monotony of day-to-day life.
This is the first book that I read from S. Nunez and I love the way wrote about nothing in particular but everting in general. Writing from the hurt. I always said that I like books where there the author is not telling me a story, the writer is telling me his thoughts and behind each of them, there is an unrevealing story, something that each mind would read differently.
I'm having a hard time understanding how I felt about this.
There were several occasions where all I could think was that while the dialogue didn't feel real to me (or perhaps was the conversation of folks far more intellectual than I), the thoughts did. Some of the the thoughts almost felt like they were exposing me and leaving me naked for the world to see (sorry, world).
This was mostly bleak, but then again, aging and cancer and dying are not generally uplifting topics. I thought the writing was beautiful, and I felt like I was in a quasi-dream state for much of the book.
But I myself have always thought of this as a blessing. Youth burdened with full knowledge of just how sad and painful aging is I would not call youth at all.
We talk glibly about finding the right words, but about the most important things, those words we never find. We put the words down as they must be put down, one after the other, but that is not life, that is not death, one word after the other, no, that is not right at all. No matter how hard we try to put the most important things into words, it is always like toe-dancing in clogs.
Did I "really like" this? I'm not sure, but giving it less than 4 stars feels almost criminal.
4 Stars
There were several occasions where all I could think was that while the dialogue didn't feel real to me (or perhaps was the conversation of folks far more intellectual than I), the thoughts did. Some of the the thoughts almost felt like they were exposing me and leaving me naked for the world to see (sorry, world).
This was mostly bleak, but then again, aging and cancer and dying are not generally uplifting topics. I thought the writing was beautiful, and I felt like I was in a quasi-dream state for much of the book.
But I myself have always thought of this as a blessing. Youth burdened with full knowledge of just how sad and painful aging is I would not call youth at all.
We talk glibly about finding the right words, but about the most important things, those words we never find. We put the words down as they must be put down, one after the other, but that is not life, that is not death, one word after the other, no, that is not right at all. No matter how hard we try to put the most important things into words, it is always like toe-dancing in clogs.
Did I "really like" this? I'm not sure, but giving it less than 4 stars feels almost criminal.
4 Stars
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