“Writers really are like vampires,” a character declares. It’s quite an admission to make about one’s chosen vocation, but it’s far from the most cutting observation Nunez makes in “The Friend,” which takes frequent, unflinching aim at the backstabbing, status-obsessed literary world. “If reading really does increase empathy, as we are constantly being told that it does,” the novel’s narrator, an unnamed novelist, observes, “it appears that writing also takes some away.” Most have come not to grieve or pay their respects, but to network and gossip about literary prizes and money and to dissect the latest review of a certain widely detested author. Early in Sigrid Nunez’s novel, “The Friend,” a group of writers gather at a memorial for a well-known novelist who has committed suicide.
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