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A parrot provides a vital connection to life when a woman moves into a penthouse apartment during the pandemicSigrid Nunez’s ninth novel, The Vulnerables, emerges from the words of others. The first line comes not from the narrator herself, but from another work she now barely recalls. From there it’s a deluge. In barely a couple of pages she quotes Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer-Lytton. In a single paragraph, Sylvia Plath, Rainer Maria Rilke, Elizabeth Bishop.Nunez has long been an allusive writer, attuned to the literature that shapes her outlook. Her narrators – Nunez standins – frequently suspend their train of thought, seeking guidance from the writers they admire. The effect is ruminative, charming, a touch eccentric. Here, though, a note of anxiety hums beneath the bookish surface. Many of the quotes address the problem of how to begin, drawing attention to the lack of establishing detail. Is a subject being sought, or nervously held at bay? As the focus tightens, we see what the narrator has been circling: Continue reading...