The author is an American literary academic and writer with multiple prizes and awards to her credit. She is probably best known for her seventh novel, ‘The Friend’ (2018), which won a National Book Award, and for ‘Sempre Susan,’ her 2011 memoir of Susan Sontag.

‘The Vulnerables,’ Ms Nunez’s contribution to pandemic literature, is set in 2020 New York. A younger person tells the protagonist/narrator, an accomplished female writer and academic of a certain age (Did I mention Ms Nunez’s protagonists are frequently avatars for herself, if not frankly autobiographical?) she should not spend so much time wandering around outside. “You’re a vulnerable,” the other woman says. “And you need to act like one.”

The somewhat thin plot line involves the usually solitary writer sharing an apartment with a Gen-Z student and a macaw named Eureka that needs babysitting but has more personality than either of his roomies, who all learn to look out for each other as the outside world descends increasingly into turmoil.

As is often the case with this author’s work, the plot is supplemented with internal monologues on other writers and literature. Joan Didion’s ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ features along with rumination on Chekhov, Borges, Céline, and Coetzee that may or may not be to everyone’s taste, but are insightful.

While the book reads more like a memoir than fiction at times,

the prose is a delight either way. It flows effortlessly off the page in a way many aspire to, but few achieve.