What Are You Going Through

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Praise for The Friend

Winner of the National Book Award 2018
A New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book of 2018
A Financial Times 2018 Best Book: Critics Pick
A Buzzfeed Best Book of 2018
A Bustle Best Fiction Book of 2018
An NPR Best Book of 2018

'A true delight: I genuinely fear I won't read a better novel this year' Financial Times

'A beautiful book . . . crammed with a world of insight into death, grief, art and love' Wall Street Journal

'Delicious . . . An intensely pleasurable read because it is so accessible, capacious and clever' Sunday Times

'A pitch-perfect novel' Vanity Fair

'I loved it . . . It's one of my favourite books and it moved me' Whoopi Goldberg, The View

Critics Review

Love, death, friendship, compassion & SO MUCH wisdom. I just adore Sigrid Nunez

Paula Hawkins

If the meaning of life is that it ends, Nunez gets to the nub of meaning in her brilliant novel. I loved it as much as The Friend

Susie Steiner

I was totally overwhelmed by this extraordinary novel. Even if it weren’t about a subject dear to my heart I would be equally thrilled by its grace and profundity. Sentence by sentence it’s a total joy – and sometimes, much to my surprise, laugh-out-loud funny

Deborah Moggach

When I open one of [Sigrid Nunez’s] novels, I almost always know immediately: This is where I want to be … “What Are You Going Through” is 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

Profound, moving and brilliant

Mail on Sunday

Beauty, friendship, nature, art: These are the salves to loneliness and despair, and Nunez offers them all in this searching look into life and death

New York Times Book Review

Brilliant … The narrative control of this novel simply dazzles

Spectator

A riveting picture of friendship intensifying as it draws to a close … a rich meditation on companionship, loss and love

TLS

Remarkable powerful

Observer

Both wise and unsettling … This book’s quiet discovery is that, no matter how extreme the circumstances, “life must be dealt with”

Wall Street Journal

I was dazed by the novel’s grace

New Yorker

A smart look at the bonds and demands of friendship

i Best New Books for Autumn

Fans of Rachel Cusk will love this thoughtful, wise novel … This complex tale demands the reader’s attention, but is all the more satisfying for it

Good Housekeeping

A funny and moving story of two women – one of whom has terminal cancer

Stylist Best Autumn Books 2020

A touching, poignant illustration of what it means to have empathy for the lives around you

USA Today

A thought-provoking novel about life and death … Nunez widens and narrows the focus of her lens, from the death of the world, to the death of a close friend and back again, with superb control. Her writing is taut, clear and insightful

Evening Standard

Impossible to put down

People Magazine

Dryly funny and deeply tender

Kirkus Reviews (Starred)

Spectacular

Publishers Weekly

Sigrid Nunez orchestrates a beautiful chorus of humanness here, and the novel asks a question we might all be thinking in these distant times: What does it mean to really be there for someone in times of hardship?

Lithub

With both compassion and joy, Nunez contemplates how we survive life’s certain suffering, and don’t, with words and one another

Booklist (starred review)

Much as in Rachel Cusk’s recent work, the narrator is a conduit and sounding board for the stories of others… Deeply empathetic without being sentimental, this novel explores women’s lives, their choices, and how they support one another….Highly recommended for readers who favour emotional resonance over escapism during difficult times

Library Journal (starred review)

Nunez’s prose is conspiratorial and elegant, whimsical and wise. Alongside a contemplation of mortality are winks: For all its pain and seriousness, life is absurd, comical; we humans are impossible to figure out – and yet so tender

Oprah magazine (Best books of the year)

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