What Are You Going Through
Now a Pedro Almodóvar film - THE ROOM NEXT DOOR
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
Now a Pedro Almodóvar film - THE ROOM NEXT DOOR - starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore
'I was totally overwhelmed by this extraordinary novel. A total joy - and laugh-out-loud funny' DEBORAH MOGGACH
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.
The woman at the heart of this extraordinary novel finds that everyone she meets has a common need: the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience for their experiences. And so she tries to pay attention, to imagine and listen to what those around her are going through. But then an old friend makes an extraordinary request and draws her into an intense and transformative experience of her own.
'I just adore Sigrid Nunez' PAULA HAWKINS
'Brilliant. I loved it as much as The Friend' SUSIE STEINER
'When I open one of [Sigrid Nunez's] novels, I almost always know immediately: This is where I want to be ... As good as The Friend, if not better' NEW YORK TIMES
'A true pleasure to read, a novel bursting with wit, warmth, and human empathy' INDEPENDENT
'Brilliant ... The narrative control of this novel simply dazzles' SPECTATOR
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nunez's deceptively casual and ultimately fierce work (after the National Book Award-winning The Friend) ambles through a range of digressions toward a plot involving euthanasia. At the beginning, the unnamed narrator has traveled to visit her unnamed old friend in a hospital, where the friend is being treated for cancer. But before the narrator describes the visit, she details her experience at a depressing lecture by a pretentious journalist who turns out to be her ex. This side trip involved an Airbnb, where "a cat had been promised," but after she checked out, having never seen the cat, she learned it had died. Eventually, she reaches the hospital, and the tension picks up. Her friend is planning to kill herself before she's too debilitated, and two other friends have refused to help. Will the narrator? As the two women make and implement their plan, Nunez studies the intersection of friendship and morality. Much of the novel's action is internal, as the attention of its judgmental, withholding 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.
