The Guardians opens with a story from the July 24, 2008, edition of the Riverdale Press that begins, €œAn unidentified white man was struck and instantly killed by a Metro-North train last night as it pulled into the station on West 254th Street.€ Sarah Manguso writes: €œThe train€s engineer told the police that the man was alone and that he jumped. The police officers pulled the body from the track and found no identification. The train€s 425 passengers were transferred to another train and delayed about twenty minutes.€

The Guardians is an elegy for Manguso€s friend Harris, two years after he escaped from a psychiatric hospital and jumped under that train. The narrative contemplates with unrelenting clarity their crowded postcollege apartment, Manguso€s fellowship year in Rome, Harris€s death and the year that followed€"the year of mourning and the year of Manguso€s marriage. As Harris is revealed both to the reader and to the narrator, the book becomes a monument to their intimacy and inability to express their love to each other properly, and to the reverberating effects of Harris€s presence in and absence from Manguso€s life. There is grief in the book but also humor, as Manguso marvels at the unexpected details that constitute a friendship. The Guardians explores the insufficiency of explanation and the necessity of the imagination in making sense of anything.