The Vulnerables

Of course, in his day, weather English weather in particular was boring. Not the far more erratic, often apocalyptic event people all over the world obsess about today.

Important to point out, however, that it wasn't normal fog condensed vapor, a low cloud that Dickens was talking about, but a miasma caused by London's appalling industrial pollution.


It was an uncertain spring.

Early each morning I went for a walk. It was my chief pleasure in a dearth of pleasures, observing day by day the arrival of a new season: the magnolias putting out their petals and so poignantly soon, as it seemed to me every year, but never more so than the spring of 2020 shedding their petals. The cherry blossoms, even lovelier loveliest, agreed but likewise short-lived. The daffodils and the narcissus narcisusses? narcissi? and the gaudy tulips that seemed almost like wild mouths screaming for attention. "Too excitable" is how Sylvia Plath once saw a vase of "too red" ones. Like Rilke's roses "standing up and shouting red." To Elizabeth Bishop, the spots on the tips of the dogwood petals were like burns from a cigarette butt. Poets.

Can it be accidental that the names for flowers are also always beautiful words? Rose. Violet. Lily. Names so appealing that people choose them for their baby girls. Jasmine. Camellia. I once knew a bulldog named Petunia. A cat named Mimosa.

So many other beautiful ones I can think of: anemone, lilac, azalea. Of course, there must be an exception. There are always exceptions. But though I'm not so keen about phlox, I can't come up with a single really ugly flower name, can you?

There are other plants, though, like weeds and herbs, with hideous names, like vetch. We're thinking of naming the baby Vetch. Meet the twins: Mugwort and Milkvetch. Horehound. Bugbane. Wormwood: the na

Vulnerables a gift." The Boston Globe

"It s a difficult task to write about a collective experience many of us would prefer to never recall, but Nunez does so, with a subtle kindness towards us all in a place when the world was at one of its most 'vulnerable' moments." Huff Post

"Rather than dwelling in despair, Nunez s book expands into a meditation on pain and the formation of unusual intimacies." The New Yorker

"Strikes the difficult balance of being both elegiac and comedic as it seeks to explore what it means to be alive during our complex moment in history. Like much of her work, Nunez s latest seeks brief and blisteringly beautiful moments of connection, which burn ever brighter amid the haunting loneliness she crafts." Chicago Review of Books

"A structure that insists on the possibility of connection. The novel s most valuable offering comes from its ability to gather elements and hold them together, as we wished to hold one another. In this respect, love pervades every page. LA Review of Books

In The Vulnerables, Nunez is back with her signature blend of wryness and poignant observation. . .Nunez sheds light on what it means to be vulnerable, and of how humans find comfort during times of crisis. Electric Literature

Funny and thoughtful. . .Nunez manages to make a story of mortality go down easy. Publishers Weekly

Nunez is a master at writing vivid characters in ordinary situations and bringing them to life, making every page fly by. And The Vulnerables is no different it s a poignant and deft portrayal of humanity in a time when nothing felt normal. Shondaland

"[A] penetrating interrogation of the nature of reading, writing, creating fiction especially in a time of widespread peril." Shelf Awareness

"Nunez s subject is the core business of being alive: the tenuous beauty of human connection, the nature of memory, the purpose of writing, the passage of time. . .the result is almost arrestingly straightforward. Spare and understated and often quite funny, the experience is less like reading fiction than like eavesdropping on someone else s brain. . . .[The Vulnerables] itself is strangely, sweetly hopeful. . .Sharp and surprisingly tender." Kirkus, STARRED review

"Nunez s ninth novel finds the dark humor in the complexities of modern life. A meditation on what it means to be alive in this moment, as much as it is an inquiry into the purpose of writing itself." W Magazine