Recalling the story of Hachikō, the narrator reluctantly agrees to take Apollo in. The wife, whom the narrator calls 'Wife Three', explains that Apollo appears to be in mourning and has been temporarily placed in a kennel. The narrator meets with her friend's third wife, who asks her to adopt her friend's senior Great Dane, Apollo.

The narrator reveals that the main point of contention between her and her friend involved his illicit affairs with his female students. Addressing him in the second person, she recounts her friend's three troubled marriages and his career as a college professor. The unnamed narrator, a writer living in Manhattan, recalls the life and recent suicide of her best friend and mentor, also unnamed. The novel contains autobiographical elements, and is written in the stream of consciousness style, which Nunez has said allowed for 'essay writing' and 'meditation' within the book. Nunez also drew inspiration from Elizabeth Hardwick's novel Sleepless Nights. A friend of Nunez's died by suicide as she was writing The Friend. Nunez was inspired to write the novel in part due to acquaintances and friends convinced their lives would end by suicide.

The book concerns an unnamed novelist who adopts a Great Dane that belonged to a deceased friend and mentor. The Friend is a novel by the American writer Sigrid Nunez published by Riverhead Books in 2018.

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez