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4.0 out of 5 stars
This was a really engaging novel., Oct 11 2007
I really got caught up in Doug's emotions over Hailey and found myself totally empathising with him for his loss. I think the descriptions of loss and grief were very accute and really brings home the strength of it to the reader.
However, the book was also really funny in places. It has a rather black humour in places and a rather wry humour in places but it definitely worked well with the more serious undertone of the book. Although some of the situations that occur in the book are a bit corny and maybe a bit fantastical, its still a great book and a great read. One I would highly recommend! If you're looking for another great read try The Fates by Tino Georgiou.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
"Fate. Destiny. God. It's all a crock", July 28 2007
Set in suburban Westchester, Jonathan Tropper's irreverent and funny How to Talk to a Widower proves that you can't rewrite history, even if you want to. "I had a wife. Now she's gone. And so am I," says the apathetic twenty-nine-year-old Doug Parker who is thrown into a maelstrom of depression and anger when his forty-something wife Hailey is suddenly killed in a Colorado airplane crash.
The novel begins a year later as the irrepressible Doug is trying to piece his shattered life back together and also raise his rebellious teenage stepson Russ. Russ hasn't disturbed anything since Hailey died, the house like a freeze-framed picture of the life they had, "snapped in the instant before it was obliterated." Doug tries to purge his negative thoughts through writing a popular magazine column, which details his life as a widower, but in reality, he spends most of his bedraggled, unshaven, bloodshot days drowning his sorrows in drink and dope, always "sad, pissed and lazy."
Russ is also doing his fair share of drugs, turning up late at night on Doug's doorstep, yet again in trouble with the police for fighting and vandalism, and inevitably fuelling Doug's frustrations and grief. Indeed, Doug and Russ have become pretty emblematic of the modern dysfunctional family with the lack of personal boundaries between both of them becoming an issue that can no longer be ignored.
It's been a year since Hailey's death and his family and friends seem to think that's the shelf life of grief, time to get back out there, they say. But honestly who wants to go out with a depressed twenty-nine year old widower with no real career or goals to speak of. When the beautiful Claire, Doug's irreverently brilliant twin sister comes to stay after she unceremoniously dumps her husband, the event kicks off a set of circumstances in which Doug is encouraged to start dating again.
Claire is positive that a good healthy dose of romance and sex will cure him of his never-ending languor. Doug, however, isn't quite prepared for the eclectic assortment of femme fatale's that steadily begin to walk though his life. First to grab his attention is his best friend's wife, the seductive and sexually frustrated Laney, who visits with her special home cooked meatloaf and who ends up showering attentions on the lonely horny and inevitably drunk Doug.
While sorting through Laney's romantic conundrum, and the other various attractive and semi-attractive women that he escorts in and out of different restaurants and coffee shops, Doug's finds support with Brooke Hayes, a twenty-seven year old high school guidance counselor and kindred spirit. Doug is immediately drawn to Brooke's understanding ways as he begins to tell her that he's built his life on the cornerstone of someone else's cataclysm.
Doug, however, must also contend with his distracted parents. His father is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's and so often has no idea what is going on or even what year it is with his mind constantly folded in on itself, and his mother copes by drowning herself in prescription drugs and washing them down with white wine so that she's permanently ensconced in a type of narcotic and drunken haze.
Of course, there's also Jim, Russ's father who is mostly bad news and who doesn't really have Russ's best interests at heart. Jim has taken it personally that Hailey loved Doug and that Doug has lived for two years with the woman Jim once loved, with the child he fathered and in the house he paid for. In the meantime, Doug takes it personally that Jim cheated on Hailey and isn't that good of a father to Russ.
The problem is that Doug is constantly sabotaged at every turn by lingering bits of Hailey's life that are lying dormant, like the smell of her on a shirt, a scribbled shopping list, her lipstick tube, and all of the residues of a vanished life. But there's also the dilemma of what to do about Russ. Both strangers and loved ones alike since Hailey died, Doug was never really expected to be a parent and up until now, neither of them wanted anything more from each other than "easy cohabitation with no strings attached."
Tropper views all of these raunchy and somewhat bawdy shenanigans with a practiced eye as he charts Doug's course through the all of the varying stages of grief. Whether he's trying to fend off the sexual advances of Laney, court the lovely Brooke, or attend a strip club with his best mates - the men gathering to buck up the sad, lonely widower in their midst - Doug knows that eventually he must start living and also try and be happy again.
Although much of the plot comes across as rather predictable and conventional, with the narrative often reading more like a movie screenplay than a fully fledged novel, the book is always entertaining, with the author telling us much about the nature of grief and suffering, and also the moral dilemmas that can suddenly come when fatherhood is unexpectedly thrust upon one.
Obviously for Doug there are no happy endings, just happy days and happy moments. He's the first to admit that he's a mess, but maybe with time, all of this pain and uncertainty will add up to some small measure of wisdom that will help him make good father to Russ and also help him to move on from his heartache and his loss. Mike Leonard July 07.
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by Jonathan Tropper
by Jonathan Tropper
by Jonathan Tropper
by Jonathan Tropper
by Nick Hornby
