Sigrid Nunez on the Beauty of Narrative Restraint

“Plot, shmot,” the writer and editor William Maxwell once said to John Updike. Sigrid Nunez couldn’t agree more. She used to tell her students, “You don’t need a plot, but you do need a story.” But what makes a story? “If you have an interesting character who is having some kind of experience, you have the makings of a story.” People sometimes dismiss plotless narratives as “quiet” books in which not much happens, but, as Nunez notes, “thinking is doing.” To illustrate her point, Nunez shared some thoughts with us about four recent quiet books that she not only enjoyed but admires. Her comments have been edited and condensed.

Brian

by Jeremy Cooper

Brian is a thirtysomething council worker in London who has always led a solitary life, one marked by an obsessive adherence to routine. One day, having decided that he should do something to feel less alone, he becomes a member of the British Film Institute (B.F.I.). Over the years, up to and beyond his retirement, he devotes as much time as possible to watching everything from genre films to Hollywood classics. Indeed, the B.F.I. becomes the center of Brian’s existence, providing consistent pleasure and intellectual stimulation. It’s “only in the cinema that he became a person,” and it’s at the B.F.I. that Brian finds acceptance among a small group of other dedicated regulars.

Cooper does a superb job of inhabiting this singular character’s point of view, and of deftly weaving into the narrative Brian’s thoughts and feelings about the films he sees. I was delighted by the book’s gentle humor and lucid prose style, and I can think of no finer exploration of what can happen when a person is fully open and attentive to art, and how a shared passion for art can connect people to one another.

Stone Yard Devotional

by Charlotte Wood

The unnamed narrator and main character of this novel is a middle-aged woman from Sydney who is caught in a moral crisis. She has lost faith in the efficacy of her work as a wildlife conservationist and in humanity’s ability to halt the devastations caused by climate change. She leaves her job and her husband and, although an atheist, retreats to a convent in New South Wales. Maybe there she can make some sense of the world.

One of the biggest questions that she finds herself contemplating is whether it’s possible for a person to live without causing harm. The nuns she observes come closest to that ideal, but a mouse plague of Biblical proportions leaves them no choice but to kill—and not always painlessly. Though the narrator cannot find answers, Wood reminds us of the necessity of seriously thinking about such questions. Her exquisite meditations on dread and disillusionment about the future, familiar to many of us, had, for me, a heartening and consoling force.

Raising Hare

by Chloe Dalton

During the pandemic, Chloe Dalton, a London-based writer and a foreign-policy specialist, retreated to her home in the English countryside. There, she finds a newborn hare and assumes the challenging job of caring for it while also attempting to preserve its wild nature. She doesn’t name it, touches it as little as possible, and arranges for it to have access to both her house and the outdoors. It’s the hare that sets the terms of their relationship, and the many inconveniences it poses bring Dalton no regrets but, rather, intense satisfaction and joy.

Observing the hare—its intelligence, resilience, and dignity—Dalton develops a deeper appreciation for nature, and she begins questioning her attitude toward other parts of her life, such as her profession. The memoir includes lovely illustrations by Denise Nestor and many fascinating details about hares which Dalton draws from natural history, folklore, art, and literature. In a troubled time, perhaps the greatest gift she receives from the hare is a sense of peace: “The atmosphere of calm suffused by her throughout the house lingers even when she is gone.” Reading the book had much the same effect on me.

Mornings Without Mii

by Mayumi Inaba, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori

One day in 1977, the poet and novelist Mayumi Inaba finds a kitten, “a little ball of fluff,” stuck in a hole in a fence. She takes it home, names it Mii, and it becomes her cherished companion for the next twenty years. During that time, Inaba’s life goes through many changes, including a divorce—from a man who, though not a bad husband, never gave her the kind of gratification that she derives from Mii—and her development as a prize-winning writer.

Mainly a biography of Mii, the book is also a great love story, one that gathers strength as the beloved begins to decline and Inaba is forced to prepare herself for the inevitable devastating loss. The most affecting parts of the memoir are Inaba’s descriptions of her intimate caretaking of Mii through a series of increasingly grim geriatric ailments. Like “Raising Hare,” this memoir reveals the profound respect, and compassion, that a friendship with an animal can inspire in a human being.