The Vulnerables

Informationen zum Autor Sigrid Nunez Klappentext NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, HARPER'S BAZAAR, VOGUE, THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICE, THE IRISH TIMES, NEW REPUBLIC AND KIRKUS REVIEWS The New York Times bestselling, National Book Awardwinning author of The Friend and What Are You Going Through brings her singular voice to a story about modern life and connection I am committed, until one of us dies, to Nunez's novels. I find them ideal. They are short, wise, provocative, funny good and strong company. Dwight Garner, The New York Times With the intimacy and humor of a great conversation, this novel makes you feel smarter and more alive. People Magazine An ode to our basic need to connect with other beings, be they human or animal, even in a global crisis that told us to stay apart. NPR Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez's ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past. Humor, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others, who here include an adrift member of Gen Z and a spirited parrot named Eureka. The Vulnerables reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another's distress. A search for understanding about some of the most critical matters of our time, Nunez's new novel is also an inquiry into the nature and purpose of writing itself. Leseprobe "It was an uncertain spring." I had read the book a long time ago, and, except for this sentence, I remembered almost nothing about it. I could not have told you about the people who appeared in the book or what happened to them. I could not have told you (until later, after I'd looked it up) that the book began in the year 1880. Not that it mattered. Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read. Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described. They should teach you this in school, but they don't. Always instead the emphasis is on what you remembered. Otherwise, how could you write a critique? How could you pass an exam? How could you ever get a degree in literature? I like the novelist who confessed that the only thing to have stayed with him after reading Anna Karenina was the detail of a picnic basket holding a jar of honey. What stayed with me all this time after reading The Years was how it opened, with that first sentence, followed by a description of the weather. Never open a book with the weather is one of the first rules of writing. I have never understood why not. "Implacable November weather" is the third sentence of Bleak House . After which Dickens famously goes on a lot about fog. "It was a dark and stormy night." I have never understood why this phrase has been universally acknowledged to be the worst way for (I forget who: something else to look up) to begin a novel. Scorned for being both unexciting and, at the same time, too melodramatic. (Edward Bulwer-Lytton, originally. In a book called Paul Clifford, in 1830. Others thereafter, in mockery, most memorably Ray Bradbury, Madeleine L'Engle, and Snoopy.) Unimaginative was the word Oscar Wilde used to describe people for whom weather is a topic of conversation. Of course, in his day, weatherEnglish weather in p...

Autorentext

Sigrid Nunez

Klappentext

**NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, HARPER'S BAZAAR, VOGUE, THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICE, THE IRISH TIMES, NEW REPUBLIC AND KIRKUS REVIEWS

The New York Times–bestselling, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend and What Are You Going Through brings her singular voice to a story about modern life and connection

“I am committed, until one of us dies, to Nunez’s novels. I find them ideal. They are short, wise, provocative, funny — good and strong company.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“With the intimacy and humor of a great conversation, this novel makes you feel smarter and more alive.” —People Magazine

“An ode to our basic need to connect with other beings, be they human or animal, even in a global crisis that told us to stay apart.” —NPR

Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past.

Humor, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others, who here include an adrift member of Gen Z and a spirited parrot named Eureka. The Vulnerables reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another’s distress. A search for understanding about some of the most critical matters of our time, Nunez’s new novel is also an inquiry into the nature and purpose of writing itself.

Leseprobe
"It was an uncertain spring."

I had read the book a long time ago, and, except for this sentence, I remembered almost nothing about it. I could not have told you about the people who appeared in the book or what happened to them. I could not have told you (until later, after I'd looked it up) that the book began in the year 1880. Not that it mattered. Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read. Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described. They should teach you this in school, but they don't. Always instead the emphasis is on what you remembered. Otherwise, how could you write a critique? How could you pass an exam? How could you ever get a degree in literature?

I like the novelist who confessed that the only thing to have stayed with him after reading Anna Karenina was the detail of a picnic basket holding a jar of honey.

What stayed with me all this time after reading The Years was how it opened, with that first sentence, followed by a description of the weather.

Never open a book with the weather is one of the first rules of writing. I have never understood why not.

"Implacable November weather" is the third sentence of Bleak House. After which Dickens famously goes on a lot about fog.

"It was a dark and stormy night." I have never understood why this phrase has been universally acknowledged to be the worst way for (I forget who: something else to look up) to begin a novel. Scorned for being both unexciting and, at the same time, too melodramatic.

(Edward Bulwer-Lytton, originally. In a book called Paul Clifford, in 1830. Others thereafter, in mockery, most memorably Ray Bradbury, Madeleine L'Engle, and Snoopy.)

Unimaginative was the word Oscar Wilde used to describe people for whom weather is a topic of conversation. Of course, in his day, weather—English weather in particular—was boring. Not the far more erratic, often apocalyptic event people all over the world obsess about today.

Important to point out, however, that it wasn't normal fog—condensed vapor, a low cloud—that Dickens was talking about, but a miasma caused by London's appa…