Diane and I watched the entertaining Sigrid Nunez interview in the BABEL series on our computer. We used to go to see the BABEL author interviews live at Kleinhans Musical Hall in downtown Buffalo but after a disastrous night last Spring when we couldn’t find any parking amid a driving rain storm, we decided to opt for the online option starting this Fall.
I’ve read Nunez’s The Last of Her Kind (you can read my review here) and Salvation City (you can read my review here) and several of her short stories in various anthologies. Nunez started the evening off by talking about growing up in New York City and her dreams of becoming a writer. Years later, she worked at the New York Review of Books and became a close friend of Susan Sontag (who she wrote about in Sempre Susan).
I was impressed by Nunez’s comments on her National Book Award-winning novel The Friend. She also spoke about What Are You Going Through, which was adapted into the film The Room Next Door directed by Pedro Almodóvar and starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.
All in all, this wonderful BABEL interview made me want to drop everything and read some Sigrid Nunez! GRADE: A
Books
- A Feather on the Breath of God. New York: HarperCollins. 1995. ISBN 9780312422738.
- Naked Sleeper. New York: HarperCollins. 1996. ISBN 9780060172763.
- Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury. New York: HarperFlamingo. 1998. ISBN 9780060174071.
- For Rouenna. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2001. ISBN 9780374254308.
- The Last of Her Kind. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2006. ISBN 9780374183813.
- Salvation City. New York: Riverhead Books. 2010. ISBN 9781594487668.
- Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. New York: Atlas Books. 2011. ISBN 9781594633348.
- The Friend. New York: Riverhead Books. 2018. ISBN 9780735219441.[26]
- What Are You Going Through. New York: Riverhead Books. 2020. ISBN 9780593191415.
- The Vulnerables. New York: Riverhead Books. 2023. ISBN 9780593715512.[27]
- It Will Come Back to You: Collected Stories. New York: Riverhead Books. 2026. ISBN 979-8217179152