Exclusive Interview with the Woman from The Friend

— In conversation with our editor. She reflects on grief and the silent comfort of animals.

— A walk through the neighborhood with Apollo. The daily ritual that helped her hold her grief with grace.

— With Apollo, in the garden behind her apartment. Their quiet companionship captured on film.

In Sigrid Nunez’s award-winning novel The Friend, the narrator—a solitary, unnamed woman—is left to care for her deceased friend’s Great Dane, Apollo. She is never given a name, nor is the friend who died by suicide. And yet, her voice—clear, precise, wounded, and wise—has stayed with readers long after the book ends.

In this imagined interview, we speak with the narrator of The Friend about grief, literature, dogs, and the quiet ache of friendship that never truly disappears.

Q1. After the death of your longtime friend, you ended up living with his dog, Apollo. How did that come about, and what was it like when you first met him?

A. His death came suddenly. We had been friends for over thirty years—sharing books, conversations, silence. We weren’t family or lovers, but he was part of my life’s architecture. Not long after his passing, his third wife contacted me. Apollo, the dog, had stopped eating. He was simply waiting at the door. I hesitated. I was barely keeping myself together. But the moment I saw him—this enormous, grieving animal—I knew. We were both standing in the middle of a loss we didn’t know how to name.

Bringing him home didn’t feel like a decision. It felt like recognition. We had chosen each other.

Q2. People often say time heals grief. But you didn’t try to suppress your sadness—you held on to it. What was the process of mourning like for you?

A. I never believed grief should be conquered. It doesn’t go away—it changes shape. Mourning, for me, was about refusing to forget. About honoring the fact that he had once been here. I wasn’t afraid of the pain as much as I was afraid that, one day, I might stop feeling it.
Grief, in time, stopped being a wound and became something quieter. Like a shadow that always follows, even when the light changes.

Q3. You and Apollo shared something wordless but deeply intimate. What do you think we tend to miss about the relationship between humans and animals?

A. We forget that not all connection needs language. Apollo never asked me to explain myself. He didn’t require clarity, or strength, or composure. He simply stayed. There’s a quiet grace in that kind of presence—one that humans often overlook in our rush to name things, to define roles, to be understood. Apollo listened with his eyes, his weight, his stillness. And sometimes, that was all I needed.

Q4. The relationship you had with your late friend doesn’t fit into any standard category—neither family nor romance nor just friendship. How would you describe it now?

A. We never named what we were. But what we shared lasted longer than most things that do get named.
He was my reader. My echo. My constant. Perhaps it was love. Perhaps it was something more patient, more enduring than that.
To me, he was my friend. That single word may seem too small, but it holds everything.

Q5. Living with Apollo came with real-world difficulties—especially since your apartment didn’t allow dogs. What did that period mean to you?

A. I was scared—truly scared—for the first time in a long while. I lived in fear of someone knocking on my door, reporting me, asking me to choose between a home and a grieving animal. But to give him up would have been to give up the last piece of someone I loved. I researched laws, counted days. Eventually, I had him registered as an emotional support animal.
That time taught me something I didn’t expect: that love, once it takes root, will fight for its place in the world—even in court documents.

Q6. What does the word “friend” mean to you now?

A. A friend is someone who stays—not because they must, but because they see you clearly and stay anyway. Even now, I still speak to him sometimes. In thought, in dreams, in the pages I write.

Apollo is gone now, too. But his presence remains. A friend, I think, is not someone you lose when they die. A true friend becomes more vivid in memory, more permanent in absence.

Final Note:

In a world that demands definitions, she gave us honesty instead.
In The Friend, the silence between people, and the bond between a woman and a dog, say what words never quite can.
She never told us her name. She didn’t have to. “I didn’t end my grief. I just decided to live with it.”