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The Vulnerables

'As funny as it is painfully honest' (Paula Hawkins)
  • Author
    • Sigrid Nunez
Format
Regular price £16.99
Regular price Sale price £16.99
The new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of THE FRIEND

'When I open one of Sigrid Nunez's novels, I almost always know immediately: This is where I want to be' NEW YORK TIMES

'I just adore Sigrid Nunez' PAULA HAWKINS


Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez's ninth novel. The Vulnerables completes a meditation on our contemporary era that Nunez began with The Friend and continued with What Are You Going Through. A solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past.

Humour, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others, who here include an adrift member of Gen Z and a spirited parrot named Eureka. The Vulnerables reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another's distress. A search for understanding about some of the most critical matters of our time, Nunez's new novel is also an inquiry into the nature and purpose of writing itself.
  • Published: Jan 25 2024
  • 218 x 142mm
  • ISBN: 9780349018119
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Press Reviews

  • NPR
    Sigrid Nunez is on a roll. She's tapped into a smart, wry voice which feels right for our times, as do her concerns with friendship, empathy, loss, and loneliness
  • Entertainment Weekly
    Nunez's voice is unflinching and intimate
  • New York Times Book Review
    Nunez's prose itself comforts us. Her confident and direct style uplifts-the music in her sentences, her deep and varied intelligence. She addresses important ideas unpretentiously and offers wisdom for any aspiring writer
  • Paula Hawkins
    A sharp-eyed and tender novel about human connection in a time of crisis. As compassionate as it is disquieting, and as funny as it is painfully honest
  • Sarah Moss
    Smart and sad and funny
  • Natalie Portman
    One of my favourite authors
  • Laura Marling
    Long live Sigrid Nunez
  • Good Housekeeping
    A breath of fresh air for a time when it still sometimes feels like there isn't any
  • Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW
    Spare and understated and often quite funny, the experience is less like reading fiction than like eavesdropping on someone else's brain . . . despite the grimness of the setting, the novel itself is strangely, sweetly hopeful; there is, it seems, a reason to go on. Sharp-and surprisingly tender.
  • Anne Enright, The Times
    Nunez has a wry compassion, and an eye for the kind of detail only grown-ups can catch. The books feel lived-in rather than hard-earned, the voice is smart and kind
  • Natasha Walter
    It is exciting to read a book that manages to be so honest and serious, and at the same time so playful and witty
  • Washington Post
    What's consistent across Nunez's books is their searching tone about the biggest of life's questions
  • Time
    Hilarious and deeply reflective
  • Publishers Weekly
    Funny and thoughtful ... Nunez manages to make a story of mortality go down easy
  • Claire Kohda, author of Woman, Eating
    Sigrid Nunez is a beautiful storyteller: there's beauty, depth, lightness and whimsy in her writing. But what I most admired was her confidence to be playful and inventive. The Vulnerables is clever, refreshing and fulfilling to read
  • Sheena Patel, author of I'm a Fan
    The Vulnerables is full of alive, curious poetry on the chaotic times we live in
  • Bidisha
    It's fresh, it's funny and it's very now. It has humour and honesty in spades, both wielded in self-defence against a world that feels off-kilter and almost absurd in its terribleness, from the gig economy to the Trump 'phenomenon', from creative frustration to urban burnout. I love Sigrid's clarity and quick expression, along with her quirky range of interests, her economy and lightness of touch
  • Anne Enright
    Once you discover Sigrid Nunez, you don't look back
  • Vogue
    Sigrid Nunez has a talent for slim, companionable novels that have both delicacy and power
  • Dwight Garner, New York Times
    I am committed, until one of us dies, to Nunez's novels. I find them ideal. They are short, wise, provocative, funny - good and strong company
  • Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and Bliss
    Beautiful and profound
  • San Francisco Chronicle
    Sigrid Nunez is the godmother of contemplating empathy and connection ...A novel that cracks open windows and offers a reassuring breeze, reminding us that it's OK - and perhaps even necessary - to need each other; it's only human
  • Boston Globe
    Nunez's rare ability to be at once wistfully elegiac and sharply hilarious make The Vulnerables a gift
  • People Magazine
    With the intimacy and humour of a great conversation, this novel makes you feel smarter and more alive
  • Harper's Bazaar, Best Books of 2023
    Grounded in an unexpected friendship between an abandoned bird and a lonely, older novelist, The Vulnerables finds new ways to expound on themes of community, companionship, and finding hope in seemingly hopeless situations
  • Los Angeles Times
    What Nunez is trying to do instead is find meaning, to understand. What this feels like is an eventful, rich, addictive conversation with your smartest, funniest and most well-read friend. Except, Nunez says, the conversation takes on new dimensions and new textures when it's written down
  • Shondaland
    Nunez is a master at writing vivid characters in ordinary situations and bringing them to life, making every page fly by. And The Vulnerables is no different - it's a poignant and deft portrayal of humanity in a time when nothing felt normal
  • Ayisha Malik
    Nunez's writing seems always to be just what I need. The Vulnerables is a gorgeous book on ageing and regret and, as is often the case, on writing. Nunez is always posing controversial questions or ideas and leaving the reader to make up their mind. I loved it
  • Wall Street Journal
    Nunez gracefully leaps from big emotions, including grief, to erudite literary digressions or biting wit
  • Elle
    Powerful prose and insights into human connection make it compulsively readable
  • iPaper
    A gorgeous, funny novel about connection in the face of the pandemic
  • Independent
    Sigrid Nunez is among the most interesting writers of our generation ... Nunez is both as cold as ice about ageing (the old are "bleached and bent and shrivelled") and funny ("you reach a certain age, and it all kicks in: Social Security, Medicare and a fondness for hydrangeas") and constantly surprises you with her references (Larry David, Lily Tomlin) as well as her anecdotes (it's tough to forget the startling image of a young woman with an eating disorder who kills her appetite by coating her tongue with Tiger Balm)
  • Good Housekeeping (UK)
    The elegant writing makes it a compelling read. I'm a huge fan
  • Jessie Thompson

    The Independent
    The chic new hardback to have on your New Year reading pile . . . [Nunez is] a literary star
  • Daily Telegraph
    Elegiac, tartly funny . . . To read it is to feel in intimate conversation with its narrator
  • Woman's Weekly
    Infused with moments of hilarity and wisdom. Beautiful
  • Guardian
    [The Vulnerables] leaves us, as the novel reaches its extraordinarily hopeful and disarming last line, with the feeling that we have been helped
  • The i
    Above all, this is a touching, beautiful book, which underlines everyone's vulnerability to all manner of challenges facing the world, not least how to co-exist even with those you would rather discard as weeds
  • Telegraph
    All kinds of vulnerability are laced through this layered, thoughtful book . . . The states of feeling she conjures are quietly shocking, reminders of the pleasures and costs of our shared humanity'
  • Irish Times
    If cheerful pessimism is a thing, then Sigrid Nunez might be a leading ambassador
  • The Lady
    Laced with humour and wit, this is a powerful portrayal of how, through connection with others, we can remain vibrant in a soul-less world
  • Daily Mail
    [A] wry, thought-provoking novel
  • Country and Town House Magazine
    The Vulnerables is sharply observed, crisply honest, and funny
  • Caroline O'Donoghue
    A funny, divinely chatty novel filled with moments of the sublime. I really think there are sections of this book that I'll be thinking about forever
  • Marie Claire
    In many ways, then, this is a covid diary, and while Nunez captures the strangeness of that time, she is too good a writer for it to stop there, with musings on friendship, connection, writing, grief and the many vulnerabilities that are part and parcel of being alive
  • Daily Telegraph, The 75 Hottest Books of 2024 So Far
    Layered and thoughtful ... it's plainly written, but has beautiful depths