"This novel by Sigrid Nunez-who is one of my favorite writers-takes place in the middle of the pandemic. It's about a woman who moves into a friend's apartment to look after her parrot, and then discovers that a young man, a college-age student, is also going to be in the apartment. The story is about how they get along, and don't get along, and the unexpected relationship that develops between them during a time when everyone is fearful of one another."
"The novel is told from the perspective of the woman, who-as with the protagonists of many of Nunez's books-is also a writer. Throughout the book, she keeps using the phrase "I remember," which she borrows from the artist and poet Joe Brainard, as an engine for her thoughts and as a way to move through time. The book seems to be very stuck in its moment-that is, the pandemic-but it's also propelled forward, by memory."
A person bought and moved back into their childhood home, where they had lived from infancy until fifteen, and found the experience like living inside memories. The return prompted attention to books that examine how people relate to their pasts and how acts of self-narration can conflict with the accounts offered by other people and by history. One novel set during the pandemic follows a woman who moves into a friend's apartment to care for a parrot and encounters a college-age man, using repeated "I remember" refrains to move through time. A collection of letters assembles shared memories and enlists other characters to interrogate memory's role in identity.
Read at The New Yorker
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