The Friend: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez (review)

Vicarious pleasure can be derived from reading Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys (1995), but over the years I kept wondering: Who and where are the wonder girls? Where are American campus and academic novels about indocile, out-of-control women who are writers based in academia, unlucky in life and love yet always landing on both feet, eccentric and wildly charming? There is a tendency to cast as protagonists unhappy women, tormented victims rather than fierce and empowered individuals with agency, resilience, and a sense of humor, so it seems that a female counterpart of Grady Tripp, a happy-go-lucky writer protagonist who gets away with everything, is missing in American literature. But perhaps what defines a wonder boy and what makes a wonder girl are two different scenarios? For years, unwittingly steeped in the patriarchal discourse, I've been operating on a fallacious premise—that the constitution of a wonder boy equals that of a wonder girl—and so I couldn't find wonder girl characters in academic novels. This essay attempts to begin to ameliorate this misconception and portray the female protagonist of Sigrid Nunez's The Friend: A Novel (2018) as a wonder girl, that is, a woman writer based in academia who chooses who she wants to be and how she wants to live—though this doesn't mean she always succeeds.

In the novel we witness a nameless protagonist, a woman, a writer, an artist, meditating on writing and relationships, sometimes on the nexus between the two. She has carved out a space for herself in life; she has loved in the past, though nowadays she devotes most of her energy to writing and enjoys modest success. Teaching, she survives; writing, she thrives.

She is a friend to a certain male professor/writer in an asexual and nurturing role, even after his death. Their relationship has changed over the years. First, he, an older professor, was a mentor to her, a younger student. Later, they were lovers, just once—when he was "the department's youngest instructor, its wunderkind, and its Romeo." When the tension was gone, they became friends. Although he had three nameless ex-wives and countless lovers left behind to choose from, she, being the best candidate according to him as she has few commitments, is the one to adopt his Great Dane, Apollo.

She is disillusioned with literature, both reading and writing it. She suffers from a writer's block, as she is trying to write a nonfiction piece about victims of sex trafficking, ruminating on how this could disempower the victims even further. She reflects on how writing is and isn't therapy, whereas he became disenchanted with students, writing, and the publishing business, and asked: "Where do all you people get the idea that being a writer is a wonderful thing?" Yet he enjoyed its perks while he could.

In a way, she is a foil to him, living like a saint: "Promiscuity had always been second nature to you … plenty of great writers were also great womanizers, or at least known to have potent sex drives." He wrote best when he was having "lots of good sex" and thus justified his cheating. There are rumors that female students have accused him of being overfamiliar and calling them "dear." They fight over this, although they rarely fought over anything. She admits, realizing her hypocrisy, "We both knew I used to be thrilled when you called me dear." She sees sexism, but her feminism is too quiet.

She shares an office with a former student of hers called O.P., now a published writer who won literary prizes, a wonder girl. O.P. thought teaching might give her something to do, but she radiates insecurity, deals with anxiety, unable to finish her second novel and dealing with impostor syndrome. Our protagonist, as an older colleague, observes her with sympathy, for some of the greatest authors have grappled with a similar...