I am enchanted by the spare and sometimes weird musings from Nunez, writer of The Friend. They are poignant in a way I'd like to think I see my life, but in reality, need the help of books like this to bring beauty to the mundane. The Vulnerables is a Pandemic story that captures the feelings of isolation and vulnerability of the lockdown in a way that is akin to those early days of living through it.

Sigrid Nunez is an author I've been meaning to read FOR YEARS. I own more than one of her book, but somehow a library copy of her latest was my first. This novel had my heart from its first page. Ostensibly a pandemic novel about an author's experience right before and during the early days of the pandemic lock down of 2020, it's also a profound meditation and exploration of reading. At times I felt like I wasn't fully understanding all of the references, but I also came to believe that doesn't matter; it's my reading experience. And when I read it again, I'll likely feel and appreciate some parts differently, in a different reading experience. Amazingly, I was able to read it in one evening, which is such a rare experience in this stage of life. I sat down to read 50-75 pages or so, but I didn't want to stop. It's one of those books that as soon as I finish I want to start it again because I'll experience the book and its journey differently knowing how it ends. After a late start reading Nunez, which one(s) should I read next?

In her pandemic novel, 'The Vulnerables,' Sigrid Nunez blends elegy and comedy

You remember the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown. Amid fear and uncertainty, we washed our canned goods and made masks out of scrap material. We took walks and watched birds. We planted gardens. We ordered DoorDash. We hunkered down in our homes, wondering if the world would end.

In her new novel, “The Vulnerables,” author Sigrid Nunez recounts those days in vivid detail, with the bittersweet essence of hindsight. Her nameless narrator is an older woman and a writer — someone old enough to be considered a “vulnerable” in pandemic parlance — who agrees to spend the first part of the lockdown living in a luxurious New York apartment, looking after a friend’s miniature macaw. The bird has been abandoned by his college-age bird-sitter, and when the young man returns without warning, our narrator finds herself quarantined with a stranger.

The novel reads like a memoir, as the narrator describes that bizarre period in recent history through a series of everyday interactions and observations. She’s a writer who’s trying to write, but she’s so distracted and overwhelmed, she can’t even read more than a few paragraphs at a time. It’s a feeling many readers, including myself, can relate to.

With her earlier novel, “The Friend,” Nunez explored loss and grief, and discovered that humor belongs on that spectrum. Here, too, she finds that “elegy plus comedy … is the only way to express how we live now.”

“Just because something isn’t funny in real life doesn’t mean it can’t be written about as if it were,” the narrator says. “Funny might even be the best way to write about it.” And it never hurts to have an animal sidekick.

During 2020, when I was always alone at home with my phone and my Facebook friends, unable to concentrate on reading fiction, I wondered how authors were processing this strange world and how it would figure in the next round of published novels. The Vulnerables is yet another winner.

Sweet and tender! Sigurd Nunez has a gift for writing about relationships with animals. Thank you for the review copy!

I actually DNF’d this book in October, but after a trusted source gave it a rave review and compared it to To the Lighthouse, I knew I had to try again. My first attempt was reading it on the page, and my struggle was not understanding what Nuñez was trying to accomplish with her structure. The first part of the book includes some truly lovely commentary on books, writing, and the nature of loneliness, but I struggled feeling like Nuñez would have been able to more effectively accomplish her aims in essays rather than burying them in a (mostly) plotless novel. For my second read, I tried the audio version, and what a world of difference that made!! Narrator Hillary Huber brings the voice and the narrative to life in a way that really helped me appreciate the book for what it is. It’s definitely a no plot, all vibes type of novel, but it’s also charming, funny, and challenging in the very best way. I adored this one and am so glad I gave it a second chance.

Sigrid Nunez writes work of high literary merit, and The Vulnerables meets that bar. I can see it landing on many required reading lists.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me.

This book describes Covid in a big city. The book brings two unlikely people together in a friend’s house due to extraordinary circumstances. The book was very informative and interesting.

Sigrid Nunez's writing style was hard for me to get used to. There was a good portion of the book that reflects on writers and writing, which did not appeal to me very much. I did enjoy reading about her experiences and reflections on life during the COVID lockdown.

I always find Nunez’ writing mesmerising. Her books are short, well written and, almost meditative. The Vulnerables is set in New York during the first year of Covid. The narrator is a writer who agrees to care for a friend’s parrot while she and her husband are stranded in California. The novel drifts from topic to topic with quotes from many other writers. Nunez captures the period - the loneliness, lack of focus, etc. - beautifully.

This book is an atmospheric masterpiece that immediately had me wanting to re-read as soon as I turned the final page. Sigrid Nunez has a a subtle yet powerful skill for painting an entrancingly poetic scene from the mundane. Her novels are a world that afford her readers the privilege of stepping into with character development so strong, you feel a genuine kinship with her narrator by the midpoint if not sooner.

This book was like reading the journal of an extremely intelligent author. Wait. Maybe that’s exactly what it was. I loved this book. Granted, it’s not for everyone, but I read it slowly so I could savor every word.

A creatively stifled writer, an adrift young adult, and a particularly clever miniature macaw named Eureka share a luxury apartment in New York City during the coronavirus lockdown. As they attempt to care for each other under unusual circumstances, the writer wonders, what does it mean to write a timeless story? How does our present shape our view of the past? It’s a tender, moving portrait of a writer’s reflection on how our stories can bring us together.

This is officially the first pandemic novel that I think might endure. It says something poignant about that particular moment while also expanding it into a larger conversation. What does fiction offer us in times of great uncertainty and fear? Where do writers fit into what feels like the end of the world? What can novels teach us about human connection? These questions are presented without being answered in a classic Sigrid Nunez way: funny, unpretentious, meandering, quietly powerful. I loved it immensely and will be thinking about it for years to come.

In The Vulnerables, Nunez's narrator (who is suspiciously similar to Nunez herself) spends the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic—that most "uncertain spring"!—wandering around, contemplating life and literature, and then taking care of a parrot and bonding with a Gen Z student. The Vulnerables is a quiet, thoughtful novel—it reads as a collection of musings with some plot elements as a backdrop. While the structure might not be for every reader, I appreciated the book for what it was.

I thought The Vulnerables was very similar to Nunez's 2018 novel The Friend, for which she won the National Book Award. These novels aren't quite autofiction, like her debut novel A Feather on the Breath of God, but they clearly have strong autobiographical elements, and the narrators all seem like pretty much the same character. In both The Friend and The Vulnerables, the narrator ends up taking care of a pet. Part of me wishes that the novels were more different—I don't want to feel like I'm reading another version of the same book—but the voice is consistently engaging, and who reads Sigrid Nunez novels for plot?

Reading this book made me feel as though I was sitting down with my most interesting writer friend, one that I hadn’t seen since the pandemic and catching up with -well more like listening to- one mesmerizing story after another of her life over the last few years…especially if she ended up in lockdown in a friend of a friend’s New York cavernous mansion, with a high-need attention-seeking parrot to pet sit and an unexpected cohabitant: an unhinged 20 something young man who has been kicked out by his rich parents and needs a place to stay. The parrot adores him, your friend, not so much and there’s quite a story in that.

And being with this most interesting friend means hearing a pearl-like string of revelations and insights from her thoughts on writing, literature, and quirky observations of the human comedy. Her interests are wide-ranging but hang together and whatever she mentions arrows to the center, as in her memories of being in a brownie troop and delivering handmade valentines to nursing home residents, the horror of old age and decrepitude confronting young girls who shrink back in barely disguised fear and revulsion. These observations are worthy of Colette.

The pandemic recedes and the world returns to kind of normal, leavingmany questions, many delicately turned vignettes, many provoking ideas, and this strange and beautiful remnant of a singular experience. Highly recommended.

The Vulnerables follows an unnamed narrator who, during the COVID-19 pandemic, finds herself taking care of a parrot and unexpectedly living with an outcast Gen Z'er. Like other Nunez books, this one floats between the character's experiences - current and past - and what comes off as random musings. Blink for too long and you may find yourself unsure of what's happening.

Despite the fragmentation, there's something intriguing about Nunez's non-sequiturs, and I wanted to read them, even though I was more interested in what was going on with the main cast of characters.

I would avoid this if you're not able to contemplate the pandemic and its myriad impacts, but if you can stomach it, Nunez handles the topic with great accuracy and reverence.

Thanks to Penguin Group Riverhead for providing a copy via NetGalley.

Know that this wanders around- a lot- but that there is a plot and there are some wonderful and funny lines and observati0ns. The narrator, a writer, is struggling after the death of a friend and then COVID hits. She finds herself caring for Eureka the parrot after the college age male who had been hired to watch him leaves the empty NYC. She builds a relationship with the parrot, takes long walks through the city and then when she least expects it the kid- who she named Vetch- returns and upends everything. As annoyed as she is by Vetch, he will become important to her. Nunez has a way of describing someone with just the right pointed words (that applies to the kitchen at the apartment as well). Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Nunez has captured the city, the disconnections and the challenges of covid in a novel that you can enjoy in an afternoon but which will linger in your mind. And you, like me, might find yourself seeking out caramel oat milk ice cream.

The Vulnerables is a lovely novel that dives into what it means to be human and find connection in our crazy world. We follow the narrator, somewhat aimlessly, through life during the pandemic while she muses about the challenges of being a writer.

While at some times a bid disjointed, I enjoyed venturing into the mind of this narrator. For some it may feel like yet another pandemic novel but I appreciate the chance to look back on that impossibly challenging time through someone else’s creative eyes.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Riverhead for the advance copy of this book.

A short, contemplative novel set during the Covid pandemic. A little too quiet for my taste, but a lovely book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for providing an electronic copy of this novel to read. I greatly enjoyed this book. It is part novel/part memoir of a writer during the pandemic. I am a fan of Nunez' work. This is somewhat similar to her previous' work but seems more blatantly autobiographical. Nonetheless, this is a fantastic and wholly original novel of the pandemic.