Summary | Author | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions
How to Talk to a Widower
Jonathan Tropper, 2007
Random House
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385338912
In Brief
When twenty-seven year old Doug Parker traded in his bachelor pad for a house in the suburbs, complete with a teenaged stepson, he never expected that two years later he would suddenly lose the woman who meant everything to him. Without beautiful, confident Hailey to guide him through the challenges of now becoming a true surrogate father to her son Russ, Doug is on his own to navigate their new course.
And while he knows he can't travel back to the way things were, it will take a bossy twin sister under his roof, and some colorful mistakes, before Doug will realize how far he has come, and appreciate how far he will go. (From the publisher.)
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About the Author
• Birth—1970
• Where—Riverdale, New York, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Westchester, New York
Jonathan Tropper is also the author of This is Where I Leave You, How to Talk to a Widower, Everything Changes, and Plan B. He lives with his wife, Elizabeth, and their children in Westchester, New York, where he teaches writing at Manhattanville College.
How To Talk To A Widower, was the 2007 selection for the Richard and Judy Show in the United Kingdom. Everything Changes was a Booksense selection. Three of Tropper's books are currently being adapted into movies. Tropper is also currently working on a television series How to Talk to a Widower which was optioned by Paramount Pictures, and Everything Changes and The Book of Joe are also in development as feature films. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia.)
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Critics Say . . .
A portrait of a modern guy in crisis, Tropper's third novel follows Doug Parker, whose life is frozen into place at 29 when Hailey, his wife of two years, is killed in a plane crash. Unable to leave the tony suburban house they once shared, he spends his days reliving their brief marriage from the moment he found her sobbing in his office over troubles with her first husband. At the same time, Doug's magazine column about grieving for his wife has made him irresistible to the media (book deals, television spots and the like are proffered) and to a wide array of women who find him "slim, sad and beautiful." Though stepson Russ is getting in trouble at school and Doug's pregnant twin sister, Claire, moves in, no amount of crying to strippers can keep Doug from the temptations of his best friend's wife or Russ's guidance counselor. Alternately flippant and sad, Tropper's book is a smart comedy of inappropriate behavior at an inopportune time.
Publishers Weekly
Doug Parker is having a bad year. After the death of his wife in a plane crash, the 29-year-old freelance magazine writer withdraws from family and friends and rarely leaves the home he shared with his wife and stepson in the New Radford suburb of New York. There, he medicates with alcohol, produces a much-lauded monthly column about his grief, and wages war on a band of insurgent neighborhood rabbits. With his life in shambles and the specter of his dead wife haunting every waking thought, Doug struggles to hold off the world-his dysfunctional family, a nagging agent hoping to cash in on the success of his magazine column, and his troubled teenage stepson in need of a surrogate father figure-while he navigates an unfamiliar landscape of pain and hopelessness. Eric Ruben's sometimes uneven reading captures well the jarring moments when Doug's seemingly impenetrable self-absorption is pierced by genuine compassion for and understanding of those around him-most notably his stroke-afflicted father, his domineering mother, and his two sisters-all of whom conspire at different moments to draw him out of his paralyzing grief. Ruben also deftly handles Doug's sexual misadventures with the right combination of passion, humor, and despair, as the wounded and irresistible widower agonizes over his longing for his dead wife and his growing need for companionship and love. Recommended for all general fiction collections.
Library Journal
Mixing pathos and comedy in equal measure, Tropper tells the story of "slim, sad, and beautiful" Doug Parker. A year after his wife Hailey's death in a plane crash, 29-year-old widower Doug is still grieving heavily and has abandoned all pretense at civility and discretion.... With superb comic timing, Tropper keeps the sappiness at bay by juxtaposing tender scenes that often feature Doug's reminiscences about meeting and marrying his wife with funny, often vitriolic dialogue. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist
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) 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
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Book Club Discussion Questions
1. Doug suffered a tragic and sudden loss, but in the fall-out of this event hasn't always behaved the way one would hope to if in his shoes. Do you empathize with Doug or is his self-destructive behavior a detriment to his character? What allowances would you give to someone who is grieving, and when do their actions become unforgivable?
2. What are Doug's views on marriage both before and after meeting Hailey? Do they change after he loses his spouse? Do you foresee him eventually remarrying?
3. Following his stroke, Doug's father underwent a personality change. Describe how this changed his relationship with his family, especially with his son. Does Doug see him as a role model; why or why not? Discuss the parallels between father and son after a traumatic event.
4. How would the story be different if it were not told in the first-person narrative? Is Doug's omniscient perspective at the heart of the novel? How would the tone change if it was being told from someone outside looking in at Doug?
5. How does the novel'ssuburban setting play a role? What is the author's attitude about living in the suburbs? Do you think the portrayal of the town is meant to be satirical?
6. The author is a man-were you reminded of this while reading the novel? Would a female author writing this story have as effectively portrayed the macho attitude and competitiveness that exists between the male characters?
7. "I had a wife. Her name was Hailey. Now she's gone. And so am I." This passage appears on pages 74, 141, 282, 329, and 330 and serves as a mantra. When Doug repeats it, do you think this "reality check" provides him with comfort or is it destructive to his recovery? Does its' meaning, or his reasons for evoking the mantra, evolve?
8. Do you feel that Doug overcomes his grief? Does it change him; if so, how? Does grieving necessarily change a person? Can it be treated like other ailments that one conquers, or is it a permanent part of the sufferer, something that continues to live within them, ever changing but present?
9. Discuss the significance of setting. How are family dynamics illustrated by their surroundings and locale? Is Hailey's home and her belongings another character that haunts this story-the bra left hanging on the bathroom doorknob, the bottles of perfume collecting dust on her dresser?
10. How do the author and his protagonist use humor both in the sense of it being a literary tool, and as a way the characters relate to each other?
11. Doug's extended family is as endearing as they are dysfunctional. How do they compare to your ideal definition of a family?
12. Compare Doug's relationships with his two sisters-Claire, his twin, and Debbie, the youngest. What role does being a twin serve in Doug's life? How does Debbie's wedding bring out the individual struggles of many of the characters in the novel?
13. Discuss betrayal as it manifests itself across a wide range of connections-between spouses, friends, and siblings.
14. "The course of true love is never straight." (page 338) This is true for several of the characters. Do you think it is a universal truth? Is love so simple that people turn it into something which is complicated, or is it as complex as the people it involves?
15. Are you optimistic at the end of the novel that life will improve for Doug?
(Questions issued by publisher.)