And this is from very early on, when the main character has recently learned that her friend has committed suicide and is reflecting on, like, why. I want to start with a reading from your novel. TERRY GROSS, BYLINE: Sigrid Nunez, welcome to FRESH AIR. The novel is filled with reflections about the line between appropriate and inappropriate relations between students and teachers, what it's like to mourn a friend who left no note to explain his suicide, the bond that can develop between a dog and a person, and how being a writer has changed in the world of social media. After his death, she reluctantly inherits his dog, a 180-pound Great Dane who, like her, is grieving. She wasn't the only student he seduced, but her friendship with him outlasted his three marriages and many affairs. When she was his student, they slept together once, at his suggestion. Years before, he was her writing professor and mentor. It begins with the narrator, a woman, at the memorial of a dear friend who killed himself. We're going to listen to Terry's interview with Sigrid Nunez, who won the National Book Award for Fiction last November for her novel "The Friend," which will be published in paperback February 5. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who's away today. Their apathy amid this family’s crisis was unbearable.This is FRESH AIR. Not long afterward some neighbors called to complain. Her young son had died by suicide in the entryway of their community. One evening, in a suicide survivors group, I listened as a mother described her agony. Especially after someone suffers the loss of a child. For half of my life, though, I thought I was Jesus’s sister. I understood that the repercussions would be awful if I let people know about my issues. I had been groomed to pretend that I was normal. Schizophrenia ran in my family, and at the age of 25, I was blindsided with the illness. I am from an era that didn’t talk about it. Mental illness was something I had been raised to shy away from. If I showed her compassion by letting her off easy, she would pay it forward and let me off easy. Less punishment would be more effective, I thought. She was a cutter, and when I found out I didn’t make her write a 20-page essay on "why I shouldn’t cut myself" - my standard punishment when my girls acted out. She had said, more than once, “I’m worried I’m going to kill myself.” I thought of her as my little drama queen, and I treated her worries as such. You see, the signs were obvious with my daughter. I’ve stopped tormenting myself about not having the ability to stop my child’s suicide. Things have changed a lot in the years since her death. It was as though the thought of any impending doom in the future didn’t matter. My daughter grew apathetic about homework due dates, when all of her life she had been so conscientious money problems that were sure to crop up were ignored. I don’t know how I didn’t see it: not worrying about future consequences. I keep coming back to one such warning sign, one that is so obvious now. In the decade since her death, Nadine has been stunned by the cruelty of some reactions, and healed by the kindness of others. Janis died by suicide about a year after this photo was taken. Nadine Murray with her daughter Janis at high school graduation. Related: Do you need help? Contact the Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Maybe those things can be brushed off as “just a phase,” or maybe they’re indicative of a plan that you just can’t see. Others are more subtle: giving away something that was once coveted, or neglecting personal hygiene. When it comes to suicide, some warning signs are obvious: self-harm, for example. Janis had attended the College of Charleston for her freshman year, and decided to stay there in an apartment off campus, rather than come home to Myrtle Beach for the summer. It happened on a brutally hot night, in July, in Charleston, South Carolina.
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