What Are You Going Through

 I seldom glance at the descriptions this site has of the books I've read or am thinking of reading, but I looked at the one for this book and I was surprised at how inaccurate it is. The core of it is the impending death by cancer of an unnamed old friend of the narrator. Not that other things aren't there, but it's this that everything hangs on.
 If I met Nunez at a social gathering and were at my best in every way, she'd edge away from me in under a minute because she'd find me so uninteresting and dimwitted. It would be no surprise—what else could I expect from someone who's hung out with Susan Sontag and many others?—but I'd be bummed nonetheless. You ever see nodders? At meetings or lectures they bob their heads in agreement like those dunking bird toys as they agree with everything a speaker is saying. I felt like one as I read [b:What Are You Going Through|51152434|What Are You Going Through|Sigrid Nunez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1585361945l/51152434.SY75.jpg|74855144], though my nodding was internal.
 I know the topic sounds like a downer, and no, it is not told with a heartwarming dose of humor. The book is, however, so good that even I, a man in my sixties with two kinds of cancer and a questionable heart, liked reading it. It's short enough and goes fast enough that reading it again would be a good idea.
 An added bonus is that it has illuminating insights into writing and writers.

 Understood: language would end up falsifying everything, as language always does. Writers know this only too well, they know it better than anyone else, and that is why the good ones sweat and bleed over their sentences, the best ones break themselves into pieces over their sentences, because if there is any truth to be found they believe it will be found there. Those writers who believe that the way they write is more important than whatever they may write about—these are the only writers I want to read anymore, the only ones who can lift me up.

UPDATE: worth rereading. So I did. What an exquisite voice. What a beautiful book. I can’t say what it’s about, any more than I can say what life is about, only that it’s a meandering, disjointed path touching on loneliness, communication, relationships, aging, memory, listening. The first-person narration is almost ethereal: we learn almost nothing of her, she goes through life taking up very little space but missing out on little. The whole book is her observations on interactions with others, with a big ghostly gap where we’d usually have an active character. Somehow, by hiding the person, Nuñez highlights the ways in which we navigate our lives, how we learn (or don’t), grow (ditto), come to peace with ourselves. Nuñez paints behaviors I recognize, in myself and in people I love and in people I avoid, and she has me thinking about who I want to be.

[Original review: Probably not the best book to read on a painful flight home from a memorial for someone who, four months ago, did not know he had cancer. I kept going anyway: maybe the Universe had a message for me? (No, of course I don’t believe that stupid shit. But I do believe in learning from every opportunity that’s handed to me. And learn I did. But I don’t think I can write about this book right now.)]