In the novel ‘Loved One,’ an ambiguous friendship is further complicated by loss

Summary

---

NPR's Book of the Day — “Loved One”: Navigating Ambiguous Loss and Unlikely Friendship

Host: Juana Summers (NPR)
Guest: Aisha Muhar, author of Loved One
Date: August 27, 2025

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, NPR’s Book of the Day dives into Aisha Muhar’s debut novel, Loved One, a poignant and elegant narrative exploring the complexity of ambiguous grief and the nuanced relationships left in its wake. The conversation centers on the novel’s protagonist, Julia, whose journey through loss is thrown into relief against a backdrop of unresolved friendship, sudden death, and the formation of an unusual bond with another mourner. Host Juana Summers and Muhar discuss how grief becomes an ever-present but subtly woven theme, the creative intentions behind this literary approach, and the impact of friendship and uncertainty on both life and mourning.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction to Loved One and Ambiguous Loss

• Julia, a thirty-year-old woman, is thrust into grief at the funeral of her former boyfriend and enduring friend, Gabe.
• The opening scene is intentionally disorienting, blurring the lines between wedding and funeral, mirroring the confusion of sudden loss:

  “This perpetual wedding season was such a well-known truth about people our age…by anyone’s estimation, it would have been more likely I was speaking at the happiest day of his life.” (Aisha Muhar reading from the novel, 01:47)

What Is Ambiguous Loss?

• Muhar emphasizes the unique challenge of ambiguous loss—the kind of grief riddled with unanswered questions, silence, and unresolved feelings:

  “Ambiguous loss is different from just a standard loss…someone dies and things are left unsaid, or there’s a sudden rupture. It’s hard to find closure and resolve issues in a relationship when the other person has passed away.” (Aisha Muhar, 02:34–03:19)

• Juana Summers (03:19) expands on this universality, noting how many wrestle with endings that are never clearly defined.

The Allure of Uncertainty, Humor, and Life

• Muhar intentionally infuses her exploration of grief with levity, everyday distractions, and humor rather than overwhelming sadness:

  “I wanted to write a book about grief that would not further depress people…to include moments of joy and lightness and humor in it.” (Aisha Muhar, 03:42)

• Insight: The experience of loss is not monolithic—life’s everyday rhythms and surprises continue, often in jarring contrast to sorrow.

The Dynamic Between Julia and Elizabeth

• At Gabe’s funeral, Julia meets Elizabeth—a woman seven years older, accomplished, blunt, sober, and British. Their relationship quickly becomes central to the story’s progression and Julia’s quest for understanding herself and her past with Gabe:

  “Elizabeth…says to her, when Julia goes to introduce herself, ‘I know exactly who you are, and I know who you were to Gabe.’…Maybe she does know something.” (Aisha Muhar, 04:32)

• The tension between Julia’s need for answers and Elizabeth’s directness pushes both women towards confronting their feelings and the ambiguous truths Gabe left behind.

Portraying Grief Without Centering It

• Muhar’s intent was to keep direct conversation about grief sparse, allowing lived experience to depict mourning’s impact:

  “I wanted to write something that was about loss but was very much centered in life…because the other thing about loss is that life does go on around you, as difficult as it may be.” (Aisha Muhar, 05:42)

• She discusses using dialogue and character dynamics to keep grief beneath the surface—much like real life.

Author’s Personal Relationship with Grief

• Muhar’s writing was shaped by her own losses, including several close deaths and the disorienting era of the pandemic:

  “I started writing the book after I’d experienced loss in my own life…a season where I lost four people close to me…And as life goes on, there were other losses.” (Aisha Muhar, 07:07)

• Discussion on the misinterpretation of the “five stages of grief,” often applied to mourners rather than the dying (as originally intended by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross).
• Muhar reframes grief as a “long journey to feel a feeling,” emphasizing its nonlinear, often unexpected progression.

Interpersonal Connections as Vessels for Understanding

• As the novel unfolds, Julia’s complicated friendship with Elizabeth becomes a mirror—and sometimes a window—into the different ways Gabe was experienced and remembered:

  “If you were in a room with someone who had dated someone you had dated, or if one of your exes was in a room with another…Would they agree about who you are as a person?...just being around Elizabeth causes Julia to look at Gabe in a different way.” (Aisha Muhar, 08:51)

• This triangulation provides both characters (and readers) insight into love, memory, and self-discovery.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Grief’s Indirectness:
  “I wanted to write something that was about loss but was very much centered in life…someone’s asking you what you want for dinner. And it goes back and forth.”
  — Aisha Muhar, 05:42

• On Ambiguous Loss:
  “It’s hard to find closure and resolve issues in a relationship when the other person has passed away.”
  — Aisha Muhar, 03:14

• On Experiencing Grief:
  “I thought of Julia’s story as a long journey to feel a feeling. Because it can take a while to fully feel everything that grief brings up.”
  — Aisha Muhar, 07:58

• On Relationships After Loss:
  “Just being around Elizabeth causes Julia to look at Gabe in a different way. Because this is someone who’s had a completely different experience with him.”
  — Aisha Muhar, 09:20

---

Timestamps of Key Segments

• Opening & Theme Introduction: 00:02–01:33
• Setup of Julia and Gabe’s Story: 01:33–02:13
• Defining Ambiguous Loss: 02:23–03:19
• Joy and Humor Amid Grief: 03:42–04:23
• Julia and Elizabeth’s Dynamic: 04:32–05:28
• Portraying Grief Subtly: 05:28–06:55
• Author's Experience and Research on Grief: 07:07–08:32
• Interpersonal Insights and Moving Forward: 08:51–09:37
• Conclusion and Thanks: 09:37–09:42

---

Takeaway

Aisha Muhar’s Loved One gives voice to complicated, often unspoken experiences of grief—especially when tinged with uncertainty, unresolved feelings, and the surprising connections forged in loss’s wake. With a deft blend of subtlety, humor, and piercing emotional observation, Loved One invites readers (and listeners) to find meaning where clarity is elusive and to celebrate the irregular, sometimes contradictory path toward healing.

---

Transcript

[Andrew Limbong]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. The novelist Aisha Mahar describes the journey her protagonist takes in her new book. Like this, she says, it's a long journey to feel a feeling. It's an interesting way to frame her novel, which is called Loved One, since it opens at a funeral. But grief takes its time, right? It sort of works through you at its own pace. After the break, miharu talks to NPR's Juana Summers about slowing down the grieving process and really examining how it plays out differently in different people.

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

This message comes from Wayfair as summer winds down, make your home ready for the season ahead. Refresh your workspace with desks, bookcases and office chairs for way less. Or make weeknight dinners a thing again with quality cookware that makes mealtime a breeze. Get organized, refreshed and back to routine for way less. Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W A Y-F-A-I R.com Wayfair every style, every home. This message comes from NPR's sponsor, Shopify. No idea where to sell? Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. It is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or IPO ready, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run and grow your business without the struggle. Once you've reached your audience, Shopify has the Internet's best converting checkout to help you turn them from browsers to buyers. Go to shopify.com to take your business to the next level. Today.

[Juana Summers]

Aisha Muhar's debut novel, Loved One chronicles a series of events in the life of 30 year old Julia that just don't make sense. The story opens with a moment that looks and feels like one of the endless weddings Julia has been attending. Except it's not.

[Aisha Muhar]

This perpetual wedding season was such a well known truth about people our age that I could feel an awareness of it in the room as I stood up clutching my own folded sheet of printer paper and began to speak about my dear friend Gabe. It was one of the things I had to avoid saying in Gabe's eulogy. The obvious thing that he was only 29 and his death was so sudden by anyone's estimation, it would have been more likely I was speaking at the happiest day of his life.

[Juana Summers]

It's Julia's effort to understand her relationship with Gabe driving Muhar's poignant and engrossing story. Aisha Muhar joins me now. Welcome to All Things Considered.

[Aisha Muhar]

Thank you.

[Juana Summers]

So we meet Julia at Gabe's funeral, and Gabe was her first boyfriend. That romance didn't last, but their friendship does. Tell us, where was their relationship when Gabe died?

[Aisha Muhar]

Well, at the time that Gabe dies, their relationship is a bit of a question mark. And that is what Julia is dealing with because for nearly a decade, she and Gabe have been friends since they briefly dated. And then things get a little more complicated before he dies. And we learn more about that as the book goes on. But for Julia, it's difficult because in a moment of loss, you want to remember someone in the best way possible. You want to be able to have closure, and instead it ends up being this ambiguous loss. And ambiguous loss is different from just a standard loss, an ambiguous loss, someone dies and things are left unsaid, or there's a sudden rupture in a relationship. And it's hard to find closure and resolve issues in a relationship when the other person has passed away.

[Juana Summers]

I mean, hearing you describe that and having read the book, I don't know many of us who haven't experienced some sort of ambiguous loss in our lives where things end for one reason or another. And you're spending all of this time trying to piece together in your mind why everything sort of took the turns that it did, what might have been reliving all of those little sort of uncertain moments. Why was that notion something that you wanted to explore?

[Aisha Muhar]

I find uncertainty to be a very interesting topic when writing. I knew that I wanted to write a book about grief that would not further depress people. Once I had the story, I was trying to find a way to include moments of joy and lightness and humor in it. But also I found that for all of the characters because they're all in some way experiencing that loss of Gabe. And even Gabe in the book is at a crossroads in his career and is in a moment of uncertainty as well. And it makes some people reactive, it makes some people shut down, but it's just an interesting area that I wanted to look at.

[Juana Summers]

So we meet Julia at Gabe's funeral, but Julia also meets Elizabeth for the first time. Tell us who Elizabeth is and why their meeting is so confusing for Julia.

[Aisha Muhar]

Well, Elizabeth is about seven years older than Julia and Gabe, and she's this kind of cool, self possessed restaurant owner and florist. She's accomplished a lot. She's British, she lives in London. And she is also sober and is very blunt with things that she says because part of her recovery has been to be very honest with people. And her interaction with Julia is unsettling because she says to her, when Julia goes to introduce herself, I know exactly who you are, and I know who you were to Gabe. It's something immediately a defense of, who does this woman think she is? What does she know about me? And also, well, maybe she does know something. Especially because Julia's in this place of uncertainty and unsure what was going on exactly with Gabe before he died. And it's kind of that tension between them where in order to get more information, which they both want, they do have to find a way to communicate with each other.

[Juana Summers]

I mean, the story is just so subtle and elegant. And one of the things that I loved is that loved one. It's all about grief. And yet there is very little, almost no direct conversation about grief itself. Why did you take that approach?

[Aisha Muhar]

Well, I've experienced loss in my own life, and there are many books about grief now. But when I started writing the book, there weren't as many books that dealt with grief directly in literary fiction. I wanted to write a book about grief that if you were experiencing loss, you could read it and not feel more depressed by the end. I wanted to write something that was about loss but was very much centered in life. Because the other thing about loss is that life does go on around you, as difficult as it may be. And I wanted to show that that there were going to be other parts of Julia's life that were still going on, that Gabe had left, but the relationship question marks he had left behind were still there. And I felt that the way to express that in the book would come from how people naturally behave. Like, you are, in one moment, thinking about someone who's not there anymore. And then another moment, someone's asking you what you want for dinner. And it goes back and forth. And I think a lot of that also has to do with the characters of Julia and Elizabeth. They. They're getting to know each other. So there's a limit to how much they would even reveal and how much they would go into their true feelings about what they're missing. So that relationship allows us to kind of be on the surface of the grief.

[Juana Summers]

I guess one thing I wonder is, in constructing these characters and researching this book, did it at all change the way that you think about grief yourself and the ways that you've experienced it in the past?

[Aisha Muhar]

Yes. Well, absolutely it did. I read the kind of the book that the famous five Stages of Grief are about. Elisabeth Kubler Ross wrote the Stages of Grief, and it's actually a common mistake that people think that she wrote that for the grieving, but she originally wrote that for the dying people who were dying of a terminal illness and the stages that they went through. And then she wrote another book about grieving using those stages after she realized so many people were using it that way. And in that book, she talks about the different ways people grieve, how it's expressed. And I think it was a combination of two things. I was researching grief, but it also happened. I started writing the book after I'd experienced loss in my own life. And it was a season where I lost four people close to me. And then as I was writing the book, as life goes on, there were other losses. It was during the pandemic. And I think what I learned is that in those years, yes, I think grief has touched all of us. And when I was writing the book, I thought of Julia's story as a long journey to feel a feeling. Because it can take a while to fully feel everything that grief brings up. And it is those stages of denial, anger, sadness. It's all of that. But there's so many other things that come up. So I really want to slow down with that process with Julia and Elizabeth and just see how that plays out.

[Juana Summers]

I mean, Julia and Elizabeth, over the course of the book, build this pretty unlikely relationship between the two of them with Gabe sort of at the center, even though he's no longer alive. How does the relationship that Julia builds with Elizabeth ultimately help her understand her feelings for Gabe?

[Aisha Muhar]

The very first glimmer of the idea came from a cab ride I took with a friend of mine. And her friend was dating my ex boyfriend. And my ex had been, you know, a pretty good boyfriend. No notes, very nice breakup, totally fine. But her friend was not having a good experience with him. And I think what Julie and Elizabeth are going through is something that any of us would experience. If you were in a room with someone who had dated someone you had dated, or if one of your exes was in a room with another one of your exes, where would they overlap? Would they agree about who you are as a person? And just being around Elizabeth causes Julia to look at Gabe in a different way. Because this is someone who's had a completely different experience with him.

[Juana Summers]

We've been speaking with author Aisha Muhar. Her new book is Loved One. Thank you so much.

[Aisha Muhar]

Thank you.

[Schwab Sponsor Announcer]

Foreign this message comes from Schwab. Everyone has moments when they could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter. With Schwab. Get market insights, education and human help when you need it. This message comes from NPR. Sponsor 1Password Secure access to your online world, from emails to banking, so you can protect what matters most with 1Password. For a free two week trial, go to 1Password.com NPR.

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

This message comes from homes.com when you're home shopping as a parent, you have lots of questions about local schools. That's why each listing on Holmes.com includes extensive reports on local schools, including photos, parent reviews, student teacher ratio, school rankings and more. The information is from multiple trusted sources and curated by a dedicated in house research team. It's also you can make the right decision for your family. Homes.com we've done your homework.