Author: Sigrid Nunez
Publisher: Little Brown
Paperback
One of our books of the year 2024!
Cat says: Sigrid Nunez is one of my favourite writers. She could be described as writing autofiction, but her writing is much too clever to fit into any category very easily. The Vulnerables is about an older woman in New York during the covid lockdown who ends up sharing her friend’s fancy Manhattan apartment with an irresponsible younger man and a parrot they’ve both been assigned to look after. The Vulnerables, like all of Nunez’s books, is funny and moving, she writes like nobody else. This book is particularly interesting for writers as it poses questions about what it means to writer and draws on many authors, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bishop, and not so favourably, Joan Didion. I also like the way the character reflects on being an older woman who used to be very attractive, musing that if she had been the same age as her new Gen Z housemate, they would have definitely had sex.