Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for providing an electronic copy of this novel to read. I greatly enjoyed this book. It is part novel/part memoir of a writer during the pandemic. I am a fan of Nunez' work. This is somewhat similar to her previous' work but seems more blatantly autobiographical. Nonetheless, this is a fantastic and wholly original novel of the pandemic.

This was a thought-provoking read. I found myself pausing numerous times to contemplate the protagonist's plight while finding parallels to my own. This was a fresh, contemporary take on vulnerability and what it can mean to allow people "in" - I highly recommend this work! This could be a great top-dip into the pool for anyone looking to dive into literary fiction.

What a refreshing read! When I first started reading this (novella, memoir, whatever since it doesn't matter the genre), I thought, oh no, not another pandemic novel. But, then I thought about why there have been so many pandemic novels since writers were holed up for so long, making it the perfect time to write.

"The Vulnerables" is mainly about our narrator, an older woman writer and a young fellow who has dropped out of college, and share someone's apartment during the pandemic to care for a parrot. I thoroughly enjoyed their conversations, which were rather brief at the beginning, but once they started sharing cannabis, became much more lengthy and lively.

The book is filled with endless quotes from writers, which I also found intriguing because they worked in showing how this little book made so many connections while our narrator was immersed in relative isolation, until our young fellow joins her. Definitely a fun, short read!

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishers for this Advanced Readers Copy of The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez!

A few years ago Sigrid Nunez said in an interview something like how it’s pretty arrogant to write novels trying to be timeless and deliberately not mystifying to readers 50+ years in the future because to do so shows your ignorance in the face of climate change and the future of humanity .. so I appreciate her practicing what she preaches and pulling off writing such a timely novel.

However, being a Covid/lockdown novel, I’m not sure if there’s really an appetite for that right now. She writes it well, as always, and as always it’s more used as a backdrop while the meat of the book is a collection of Nunez’s random musings, thoughts on other literature, current events, quotes that stick with her, politics, etc (including a digression 2/3 of the way through to completely annihilate Joan Didion?). In this book she began to sound a little bit like an older person just lamenting all the ways the world has changed. Of course she’s insightful about it, but where political discussions in her books are usually much more nuanced, here it’s the very tired “2016 was the year everyone lost their minds …”

Still a wonderful book, just pales a little in comparison to her stylistically similar The Friend and What Are You Going Through. (Even Salvation City (2010) is the better of her pandemic novels)

In the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown’, our narrator finds herself the housemate of a troubled college student and a parrot. Unlikely bedfellows, but also the most needed, humans need other humans. Humans need acts of kindness. And even the smallest acts of human kindness can be the balm we need to survive distressing times.

The strange and hopeful novel we need in these strange and hopeless times. A funny and tender look at how human connection is essential to our survival.

Sigrid Nunez is undoubtedly a voice of our generation, and The Vulnerables is no exception. This book tackles NYC during the early days (especially) of the pandemic, with a focus on seniors. It's as emotionally nuanced and delicate as Nunez always delivers, and the lines are sparse and sharp and restrained, yet so tender. It's a beautiful and moving book, and definitely, one everyone will be discussing in terms of pandemic literature. Another stunning success.