"What Are You Going Through," by Sigrid Nunez

Sigrid Nunez is a truly original writer, in a somewhat quirky way that takes getting used to. On 2/7/19, I posted about her novel “The Friend,” which is about a woman who unintentionally and somewhat against her will acquired a dog companion (left to her by a friend who died), and with time, found the dog to be a treasured friend. This perhaps sounds annoyingly sentimental, but it definitely isn’t. It isn’t a book that I would have expected to like, and I had to warm up to it, but then I was completely captivated, perhaps won over as the main character was by the dog. In Nunez’s new novel, “What Are You Going Through” (no question mark) (Riverhead, 2020), there is a similar strange, uncomfortable vibe in the sense that it involves the main character being drawn into something that she never asked for or wanted to do: she reluctantly agrees to accompany her friend who has a fatal disease in her final days, knowing that her friend plans to commit suicide (self-euthanize). But in this novel as in “The Friend,” the main character is drawn in, wanting to be a good friend, and also somewhat fascinated by the decision her friend has made. The novel is about death, yes, but really it is more about life, about friendship, about enduring what seems unendurable, and about savoring the time together as the story moves toward the inevitable end. As with “The Friend,” the description makes the novel sound sentimental (the friendship part, not the dying part), but it is in fact quite unsentimental and unsparing in its observations about how people feel and behave in such circumstances. The main characters in both books are a little prickly, although caring, and do not make it easy for readers to immediately appreciate them or desire their company, but they end by being compelling, as are both the books themselves. In other words, in both novels, the characters and the stories sneak up on the reader. Both novels are beautifully written. This is a small book, physically (just over 200 small pages), but it shows us so much about friendship, connection, and what human beings do for each other over and over again.