The friend (2018)

A writer inherits her dead friend's enormous Great Dane, despite living in a building that forbids dogs. The practical mismatch supplies comedy without making either grief or the animal's distress a joke. Nunez also brings a dry, sometimes severe wit to the literary world and its claims to wisdom. This is a novel shaped by reflection and digression, with suicide at its centre. The companionship is moving because it cannot provide a complete explanation for the loss.