How to Talk to a Widower: A Novel by Jonathan Tropper

"I had a wife. Her name was Hailey. Now she's gone. And so am I." That's the mantra of 29-year-old Doug Parker in this latest from Tropper (Everything Changes). Doug spends endless days immersed in drinking and generally doing nothing. Oh, that's not quite true. He sits on the front steps of the home he shared with Hailey and throws rocks at the rabbits that march across his lawn. He also writes a column called "How To Talk to a Widower" for M magazine. Who wouldn't feel sorry for Doug? But pity, he's learned, "is like a fart. You can tolerate your own, but you simply can't stand anyone else's." Women, like meatloaf-toting neighbor Laney Potter, want to heal him; his family, especially discontented twin Claire, want him to snap out of it; and Hailey's 16-year-old son wants Doug to become his legal guardian. Tropper has the twentysomething guy thing down to a science. His prose is funny and insightful, his characters quirky and just a bit off-balance but decent enough to take to our hearts. Ultimately, a series of perhaps unexpected events (including meeting Russ's very cool young guidance counselor) just might bring Doug back to the land of the living."

~Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.