The Friend

Sigrid Nunez’s 2018 novel centers on an unnamed writer in Manhattan whose close friend and mentor has died. His widow asks her to adopt his grieving Great Dane, Apollo, though dogs are banned in her building. Part essay and part meditation, the book draws on Nunez’s own life, and it won the National Book Award for Fiction. Ada Limón was struck by the power of the sentences and by how grief is shared between dog and human.