The Beginner's Goodbye - Hardcover

Tyler, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385677545 ISBN 13: 9780385677547

Publisher: Doubleday Canada, 2012

Synopsis

Anne Tyler gives us a wise, haunting, and deeply moving new novel in which she explores how a middle-aged man, ripped apart by the death of his wife, is gradually restored by her frequent appearances -- in their house, on the roadway, in the market.
 
Crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron has spent his childhood fending off a sister who wants to manage him. When he meets Dorothy, a plain, outspoken, independent young woman, she is like a breath of fresh air. Unhesitatingly, he marries her, and they have a relatively happy, unremarkable life together.
 
But when a tree crashes into their house and Dorothy is killed, Aaron feels as though he has been erased forever. Only Dorothy's unexpected appearances from the dead help him to live in the moment and find some peace. Gradually he discovers, as he works in the family's vanity-publishing business, (turning out titles that presume to guide beginners through the trails of life) that maybe for this beginner there is a way of saying goodbye.
 
A beautiful, subtle exploration of loss and recovery, pierced throughout with Anne Tyler's humour, wisdom, and always penetrating look at human foibles.

About this title

Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2012: "The strangest thing about my wife’s return from the dead was how other people reacted." So begins Anne Tyler's new novel, which documents the days of Aaron Woolcott after the unexpected loss of his wife, Dorothy. And as arresting as the first sentence is, it's also a bit worrying. So many clichés could follow. Will Aaron resolve his grief through poetic moonlit walks with the apparition of his lost wife? Thankfully, this is Anne Tyler. And the ghost of Dorothy, like all Tyler's characters, has a kind of rich, eccentric depth that sits opposite to the expected. Aaron's recovery after his wife's death conveys all the subtle hallmarks of Tyler's style, where a flawed man must learn how to do a very difficult thing--say a final goodbye. --Ben Moebius

About the Author

ANNE TYLER was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. This is Anne Tyler's nineteenth novel; her eleventh, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday Canada
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0385677545
• ISBN 13: 9780385677547
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 208