Product Description

When Doug Parker married Hailey - beautiful, smart and ten years older - he left his carefree Manhattan life behind to live with her and her teenage son, Russ, in the suburbs. Three years later, Hailey has been dead for a year, and Doug, a widower at 29, just wants to drown himself in self-pity and Jack Daniels. But his family has other ideas... Russ is furious with Doug for not adopting him after Hailey died, and has fallen in with a bad crowd. Claire, Doug's irrepressible and pregnant twin sister, has just left her husband and moved in, uninvited, determined to turn his life around. Then there's Debbie, their younger sister, engaged to Doug's ex-best friend and maniacally determined to pull of the perfect wedding at any cost. Soon, Doug finds himself trying to forge a relationship with Russ, reconnecting with his own eccentric nuclear family, and reluctantly dipping his toes into the shark-infested waters of the second-time-around dating scene. It isn't long before his new life is spinning hopelessly out of control...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20004 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
"It's a wise-cracking, darkly comic tale, yet beneath its raucous plot lies a heartfelt meditation on love and loss." DAILY MAIL "Well written lad-lit with a distinct American twang" -- Henry Sutton Daily Mirror "this is romantic and schmaltxy in the best sense... it is consistently witty, often insightful and full of strong and engaging characters." -- Toby Clements Daily Telegraph

Bereft hipster stuck in suburbia struggles to rejoin the world of the living after losing his wife in a plane crash.In a full-on retreat from human contact, 29-year-old Doug Parker passes the year following the death of his wife of two years in a numb Jack Daniel's - fueled haze. An anomaly in the upper-middle-class town of New Radford, the freelance writer only moved there to be with Hailey, a divorcee ten years his senior. Doug copes with the loss through his popular monthly "How to Talk to a Widower" magazine column, while fending off the advances of the local womenfolk, who yearn to ease his pain. Both hyper-aware of his unique situation, yet filled with self-loathing, he struggles mightily with the realization that his career success, comfortable home and affluence (via a fat airline settlement) all stem from Hailey's death. He also has to deal with conflicted feelings for Hailey's son Russ, a sensitive but troubled teenager who is in worse shape than Doug. Feeling unwelcome in the home of his womanizing dad, Jim, Russ dabbles in drugs and gets into fights. He needs a stable male figure in his life - a role Doug hardly feels qualified to take on. Meanwhile, Doug's bossy twin sister Claire suddenly moves in with him after her marriage falters, taking it upon herself to get her brother dating again, demanding that he begin to say "yes" to life. Doug goes out on a series of comically unsuccessful dates, while flirting with Russ's foxy guidance counselor Brooke. He also succumbs to the hottest of his desperate housewives, Laney Potter, setting off a chain of events culminating at the wedding of his baby sister Debbie, a brittle overachiever. With strong, impossibly beautiful female characters and naughty, unworthy men, Tropper's latest (Everything Changes, 2005, etc.) is a resigned yet hopeful examination of grief with a side of human absurdity.Warm and modestly knowing, with a wisecracking slacker hero. (Kirkus Reviews)

Review
"Humorous...but also poignant and moving -- I had tears in my eyes on more than one occasion" (Philip Wicks The Bookseller )

"consistently witty, often insightful and full of strong and engaging characters" (Toby Clements Daily Telegraph )

"Sad, funny, brilliant, How to Talk to a Widower is one of the great books of the season" (Evening Herald )

Toby Clements, Daily Telegraph
"this is romantic and schmaltxy in the best sense... it is consistently witty, often insightful and full of strong and engaging characters."

Customer Reviews

Just a great book!
I loved this book so much that I wanted to tell everyone about it. I grew up in California and got the humor right away and I would tell anyone who likes to laugh out loud while reading to please buy this book. It was just a really good,funny,loving,honest and well i can't say enough about it so i will stop now and go home pick it out of my bookcase and read it again(i need a good laugh!).

No Timetable for Grief
This is a must for anyone who enjoyed "Friends", "Will and Grace" and those American TV movies on an afternoon. It comes from the same place; the humour and the poignancy are excellently executed.

It's a bit of a wallow, but rewarding for all that. Very much a book of the Aughties.

Doug, Russ and Claire are the lynchpins and the author details their psychological messes in a way that completely endears them to the reader. It is fun to be part of all this.

The surrounding Parker family again match those TV types we all know, but that is not to denigrate, but to praise: Tropper's writing resonates with fellow feeling and that's what makes it all so enjoyable.

This is not a deep novel, probably more sentimental than analytical. That's a plus because if that's the sort of book you feel like reading, you're in for a treat.

How To Talk To A Widower
I knew from the first page that I was going to like this book. It is extremely readable, very funny yet very poignant in places and the characterisation is excellent. I particularly loved Doug's dad - hard to say why he was so great without giving too much of the plot away though. Highly recommended.