December: “The Vulnerables” by Sigrid Nunez
The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
Our December 2023 Book of the Month
ABOUT THE BOOK
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sigrid Nunez was born in New York City, the daughter of a German mother and a Chinese-Panamanian father, whose lives she drew on for part of her first novel, A Feather on the Breath of God (1995). She went on to write six more novels, including The Last of Her Kind (2006), Salvation City (2010), The Friend (2018), and What Are You Going Through (September, 2020). She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag (2011). Her honors include a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize, a Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages.
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