When Friends Become Caregivers: A Reading List

When Friends Become Caregivers: A Reading List

This article relates to Some Bright Nowhere

In Ann Packer's Some Bright Nowhere, a woman asks her best friends to be her caregivers as she's dying of cancer. It's not as uncommon a fictional plot as you might think. Sometimes the relationship precedes the illness; other times the patient/carer dynamic gives way to friendship.

Talk Before Sleep (1994) by Elizabeth Berg

When her best friend Ruth is dying of metastatic breast cancer, Ann coordinates a band of friends to take turns sitting by her bedside and bringing her decadent treats. The passionate risk-taking of Ruth's earlier life contrasts with her current limitations—and with Ann's play-it-safe attitude. Berg celebrates authenticity and the strength of bonds between women in a story inspired by the real-life loss of a close friend to cancer.

Awake in the Floating City (2025) by Susanna Kwan

In Kwan's speculative novel, Bo is hired as a caregiver for her 130-year-old neighbor, Mia, and discovers the old woman's colorful past via the belongings in her closet. Through Mia's memories, the history of San Francisco's Chinatown comes to life, and Bo decides to create a memorial to her extraordinary neighbor. Art and human connection offer the hope of being remembered, brightening the atmosphere of a dystopian future.

We All Want Impossible Things (2022) by Catherine Newman

Edi and Ash have been best friends for forty years. Now Edi is in a Massachusetts hospice with terminal ovarian cancer and Ash realizes she has one last winter in which to say goodbye. When she's not cracking jokes at Edi's side, she's trying to distract herself with casual sex. Newman's autofiction debut achieves the unlikely feat of being as funny as it is heartrending.

What Are You Going Through (2020) by Sigrid Nunez

The narrator of this novel accompanies a friend to cancer treatments; when interventions stop working, she agrees to be there for her assisted suicide. ("Lucy and Ethel Do Euthanasia," her ex jokes.) Memories, conversations, and film and story plots mingle to reflect curiosity and empathy. There's a morbid responsibility ahead, but Nunez reminds us, "no matter how sad, a beautifully told story lifts you up."

A Little Life (2015) by Hanya Yanagihara

As decades pass in New York City, Jude and his three college roommates remain the best of friends. Two even become lovers. For a time, these close friendships help Jude cope with the mental and physical torment resulting from abuse. A wrenching, epic novel about the limitations of love, it nonetheless affirms the gift of companionship. "Wasn't friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?"

Filed under Reading Lists

This article relates to Some Bright Nowhere. It first ran in the January 14, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.