In her latest novel, National Book Award winning author Sigrid Nunez hones in on one writer's experience living in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic. Full of internal dialog, unanswered questions, and candid opinions, The Vulnerables is a difficult book to describe. It may best be read as reflections from your best friend on some of the unusual circumstances, inconveniences, and adjustments of recent years.
Feeling socially isolated, Nunez’s unnamed narrator reluctantly agrees to care for a pet parrot whose pregnant owner is stranded on the West Coast, unable to fly home in the Spring of 2020, when her twenty-something bird sitter abandons his perch. But after the writer lends her own apartment to a doctor treating COVID patients, she finds herself stuck sharing her temporary living space with the original bird sitter who returns, having worn out his welcome at his parents' home. Though longing for human companionship, the housemates are so mismatched that they quietly adjust their schedules to limit interactions while they both vie for the limited attention of Eureka the parrot.
As in Nunez’s 2018 National Award Winning novel, The Friend, and her 2020 novel, What Are You Going Through, The Vulnerables offers thoughtful reflections on compassion and loss.
Sigrid Nunez writes with such authenticity about modern struggles that many readers assume her stories are autobiographical. In her real life, Sigrid Nunez is a writer, former teacher, and New York native of mixed German, Chinese, and Panamanian heritage. She’s also quite a bit more successful than the fictional writer who narrates The Vulnerables and has contributed to many prestigious publications, including The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, and Harper's.
Alicia Cavitt
Information Specialist
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