What Are You Going Through

A woman describes a series of encounters she has with various people in the ordinary course of her life: an ex she runs into by chance at a public forum, an Airbnb owner unsure how to interact with her guests, a stranger who seeks help comforting his elderly mother, a friend of her youth now hospitalized with terminal cancer. 

“I was dazed by the novel’s grace: its creation of a narrative consciousness that, by emptying and extending itself to others, insured that its vitality would never dwindle, never dim... Radiant with meaning.” -  New Yorker

In each of these people, the woman finds a common need: the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience for their experiences. The narrator orchestrates this chorus of voices for the most part as a passive listener, until one of them makes an extraordinary request, drawing her into an intense and transformative experience of her own.

"It takes something more than intelligence to be able to write intelligently... Whatever it is, Sigrid Nunez has it. When I open one of her novels, I almost always know immediately: This is where I want to be... It’s as good as The Friend, if not better... This novel has sorrow in it. It’s also quite funny. We bumble our way toward death as we bumble toward everything... [a] wise novel."  -  Dwight Garner, The New York Times

In What Are You Going Through, Nunez brings wisdom, humour, and insight to a novel about human connection and the changing nature of relationships in our times. A surprising story about empathy and the unusual ways one person can help another through hardship, her book offers a moving and provocative portrait of the way we live now.