YES I see now why Nunez won the National Book Award for the Friend. I savored this beauty, indulging in only a few pages at a time. My nerd heart was overjoyed at every single literary reference and even more so with every theory delivered about writing and why it’s hard, why it should be, how privileged one is to decide to be a writer and on and on. The way that I was manipulated from the start, expecting a sort of love story, and, actually getting one, in a way, was very cool.

The entirety (except for THAT part