William2's Reviews > The Friend

2nd reading. I love this book. Its view of life and death is stark. It pulls no punches. Very grim yet amusing. That's its magic. Writing so lean at times as to be close to aphoristic.

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1st reading. A gem. A woman writer’s distinguished writer friend, a great philanderer, discovers that young women are no longer physically attracted to him and kills himself. The woman is then saddled with her late friend’s dog, a Great Dane names Apollo. The novel in its early stages reads in part like a response to The Dying Animal by Philip Roth, but richer, each sentence stabbing yet buoyant. The prose is achingly beautiful. Set in a peculiarly literary present day New York with fascinating allusions to writing and writers of all kinds. The story is in part a letter to the deceased, in part about how metoo has perverted our culture. The narrator also teaches a writing course to sex workers, and has to manage this enormous animal who’s mourning for his lost master. I’d like to say more about the novel’s impressive structure but that will require another reading. So, gloriously discursive. Fresh and new.