You Don't Have to Do It Alone

May 13, 2024
Poet Nepo (The Book of Awakening) explores the “gifts and challenges of being close to one another” in this florid paean to friendship. Among other personal anecdotes, he shares how undergoing cancer treatment at the same time his friend Robert worked to recover from alcoholism enabled both to start over “naked, humbled, and raw”; how supporting his wife after their dog’s death “enlarged my understanding of grief and acceptance”; and even how his fractured relationship with his brother, whom he cryptically says “feels I’ve wronged him by living my life,” reminds him to strengthen his bonds with others. The author’s at his best when unpacking what such thinkers as Raymond Carver and Aristotle have to say about the topic, though these insights are overshadowed by indulgent metaphors that muddy the book’s conception of friendship (it’s alternately defined as an “electron in the center of every story,” “the sinew that connects the muscle and bone of being human,” and “among the purest gateways to the deeper dimensions of life”). This falls short.