“The love for our neighbor in all its fullness is in being able to tell him what is happening to you, what is your torment”, wrote the Parisian philosopher Simone Weil, a phrase that the New Yorker Sigrid Nunez makes an emblem to turn her new novel into an admirable lesson in empathy, the art of knowing how to listen to others, in one of those unique tree-dwelling talks that, starting with his novel “El amigo”, with which he won the National Book Award, has led to the discovery of his other seven books and his art of narrate, between classic and experimental, as one of the contributions to current American literature. To say that “What is your torment” tells of a woman who accompanies a friend, a colleague (both are writers), who has terminal cancer, in her (decided, chosen) final stage, is to say nothing. In any case, it should be noted that, although it tells about dying and death, and therefore exalting life, it is an exercise in the power of stories, of the vital seduction of a talk that weaves and weaves diverse stories what deep down, as Sherezade taught, that is what staying alive is all about. Nunez puts together a patchwork weaving hard blows and caustic, ironic moments. To begin, she comments on the lecture her ex-husband gives about the impossibility of our continuity as a species, and that the best thing would be to stop having children and not stop apologizing to the other species that we have condemned. It is not an eschatological warning but a mere information from rigorous data. And from there he jumps to a movie, to the joys of going to the gym, to the importance of reconciliations or estrangements. The sick friend has an agonizing vital knot with her only daughter, whom she sees little, and the one who has said something to her like if you are sick, tell her; but there is always something to change and exchange; as the narrator restores, seeking to help her friend, the broken dialogue with her ex-husband. All modes of art and culture flourish ephemerally from the magic of a tone that leads to not detaching from that voice that confirms to us that these are the foundations of existence itself, as the surrealists were able to proclaim.
Source From: Ambito
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