The Brockporter Book Of The Week - The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler

From the Amazon web site:

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Anne Tyler gives us a wise, haunting, and deeply moving new novel about loss and recovery, pierced throughout with her humor, wisdom, and always penetrating look at human foibles.

Crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron grew up fending off a sister who constantly wanted to manage him. So when he meets Dorothy, an outspoken, independent young woman, she’s like a breath of fresh air. He marries her without hesitation, and they have a relatively happy, unremarkable marriage. Aaron works at his family’s vanity-publishing business, turning out titles that presume to guide beginners through the trials of life. 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—in their house, on the roadway, in the market—help him to live in the moment and to find some peace. Gradually, Aaron discovers that maybe for this beginner there is indeed a way to say goodbye.

Editor's note: I fell in love with Anne Tyler's novels back in the 80s when I read Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Since then I have read most of her novels and liked most of them and loved a couple. Her characters and the situations they find themselves in are all a bit quirky which makes the mundane interesting.

In The Beginner's Goodbye, Aaron, the main character, works with his sister in a small vanity press they inherited from their father, and a part from editing books by amateurs for self publication, they publish a series of beginners books. Aaron loses his wife, Dorothy, in a freak accident when a tree falls on their house and crushes through the roof of their house killing Dorothy. Aaron's life suddenly changes and at first he is in shock and denial, and finally moves in with his sister Nadinia. Then, his wife, Dorothy, starts appearing to him in various places which he finds very comforting. The story becomes one of a widower dealing with his grief over the loss of his wife and former life. Aaron's situation is nothing dramatic or special, but very interesting in an intimate way.

I loved The Beginner's Goodbye and recommend it. It is available at the Lift Bridge Book Shop in Brockport, NY and on the Brockporter Amazon Book Carousel. The Brockporter Book of The Week is a regular feature of the Brockporter Online News Magazine which appears most Fridays. If you have a book review which you would like to share with the readers of The Brockporter please send it to davidgmarkham@gmail.com.