THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY NPR,
PEOPLE,
AND
O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE
A
NEW YORK TIMES
CRITICS’ TOP BOOK OF 2020
THE INSPIRATION FOR THE FEATURE FILM BY PEDRO ALMODOVAR
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR
, STARRING JULIANNE MOORE AND TILDA SWINTON
“As good as
The Friend
, if not better.” —
The New York Times
“Impossible to put down . . . leavened with wit and tenderness.” —
People
“I was dazed by the novel’s grace.”
—
The New Yorker
The New York Times–
bestselling, National Book Award
–
winning author of
brings her singular voice to a story about the meaning of life and death, and the value of companionship
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. In each of these people the woman finds a common need: the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience to 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.
In
What Are You Going Through
, Nunez brings wisdom, humor, 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.