Nunez was inspired to write the novel in part due to acquaintances and friends convinced their lives would end by suicide.

[3] The novel contains autobiographical elements, and is written in a hybrid style, which Nunez has said allowed for "essay writing" and "meditation" within the book.

She begins reading Letters to a Young Poet aloud to Apollo, finding that it soothes him, and recalls author Rainer Maria Rilke's definition of love: "... two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other."

[12] Heller McAlpin, writing for NPR, describes how "Nunez deftly turns this potentially mawkish story into a penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory, what it means to be a writer today, and various forms of love and friendship — including between people and their pets.

"[13] Similarly, Lidija Haas of Harper's Magazine writes how "Sigrid Nunez’s sneaky gut punch of a novel, is a consummate example of the human-animal tale.

It presents itself as a thinly fictionalized grief memoir in which an unnamed, Nunez-like writer, after the suicide of her beloved mentor, adopts his heartbroken Great Dane, Apollo.

"[14] Haas continues, noting that "The Friend's tone is dry, clear, direct — which is the surest way to carry off this sort of close-up study of anguish and attachment.

More for aesthetic than for moral reasons, the narrator gives up her attempt to write about a group of traumatized women with whom she’s been volunteering to slowly, painfully, construct instead the book we’re reading.

[15] The Friend was adapted into a film directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, and starring Naomi Watts as the narrator.