Sigrid Nunez's 2018 novel The Friend won the National Book Award. It's now a film, starring Naomi Watts and Bill Murray, about a woman who inherits a dog after her friend's suicide. She spoke with Terry Gross about the book in 2019.Also, Justin Chang reviews the new French film thriller Misericordia.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the story behind the novel 'The Friend'?
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. The new film The Friend, starring Naomi Watts and Bill Murray, is based on the novel of the same name by Sigrid Nunez. Her book won a 2018 National Book Award for fiction. It begins with the narrator, a woman, at the memorial of a dear friend who killed himself. He was more than a friend. Years before, he was her writing professor and mentor.
When she was his student, they slept together once, at his suggestion. She wasn't the only student he seduced, but her friendship with him outlasted his three marriages and many affairs. After his death, she reluctantly inherits his dog, a 180-pound Great Dane, who, like her, is grieving. Here's a clip from the film. Bill Murray as Walter and Naomi Watts as Iris are the two old friends.
He's trying to persuade her to get his daughter to help put together a book of his work.
She's lovely, she's bright, I like to work by myself. She's very bright. I just said that, didn't I?
You might appreciate another perspective, you know, someone to bounce things off of.
No, that's not the point.
Young, energetic, and my daughter.
Right, but she hardly knows you, she doesn't know your work, your relationships.
And that's exactly what I'm trying to fix.
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Chapter 2: How does the film adaptation of 'The Friend' differ from the book?
So I have to have that in my mind that that might have happened to him too.
It must hurt for you to think about that.
Certainly. I was not in touch with him right before he killed himself and there was no note. So I really don't know exactly what his thoughts were. Now, he was somebody who had been suicidal during his life and who suffered from depression and had been very unhappy.
But still, even when a suicide like that happens, it can come as an extraordinary shock while at the same time not really being a surprise. I was not surprised. In fact, when I came home from teaching and I saw an email from a mutual friend that said, call me when you get this message, I knew instantly.
When a friend of yours talks about the temptation of suicide, what do you say? Do you try to talk them out of it? Do you try to just listen?
Oh, I try to just listen. My friend who jumped from the bridge, suicide was something he talked about all the time and the different ways that he might do it. Also, when you know that somebody is feeling this way, you make all those suggestions about places to get in touch with, people who might be able to help, to go into therapy if you aren't already.
But I think it's very, very hard for people to deal with other people's suicidal feelings because it's so extreme, self-homicide, self-murder. It's so against the normal course of things. And since I wrote this book, I receive so many emails all the time from people who... who have lost people, in some cases very recently, to suicide.
And I do have to think of ways to answer those emails, and I do. I answer every one of them.
Another issue that your novel deals with is relationships between professors and students, specifically between male professors and female students and the attraction that can form between them. The main character is a woman, and the character who kills himself, her very dear friend, had been her college professor years ago.
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Chapter 3: Why did Sigrid Nunez write about suicide in her novel?
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll see you next time. I don't know. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know.
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