How to Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper

How to Talk to a Widower

Jonathan Tropper

Grade: A-

Fiction

If asked for one word to describe Jonathan Tropper's How to Talk to a Widower, I'd choose one I don't throw around lightly: sublime. Devastatingly profane, laugh-out-loud funny, yet surprisingly emotional, it's a book I'm thankful that James at a bookstore lent to me after I heard about it from Laura, who had earlier been told about it by James.

Twenty-nine-year-old Doug Parker is slim and beautiful, and after Hailey, his wife of two years, died in a plane crash he is still so sad that he cannot move on in his life. The monthly column he writes about his inappropriate grief gained him a large magazine following, yet he refuses to follow his agent's advice and write a book out of his experiences that publishers are clamoring to buy. Instead he obsesses over the annoying squirrels who live in the garden of the house he shared with his wife, the house she previously shared with her first husband and their son Russ, now a grieving 15-year-old whose father Hailey realized was banging another woman when she found his snipped pubes in their bathroom trash can.

Women in the tony Westchester neighborhood want to take care of Doug - or sleep with him - while their husbands want to buy him lap dances. But he is forced out of himself by two things: Russ needs him to step up and be a father to him, and his bossy, pregnant twin sister Claire, who's decided to move in after leaving her husband, promises him that if he turns himself over to her, she'll fix him. God knows he needs the help...and can't rely on the rest of his family. His dad, once a prominent doctor, whom he can't remember as ever having hugged him, is becoming lost to dementia while his former actress mother, a cross between Marilyn Truman and Bobbi Adler from Will and Grace, self-medicates.

Meanwhile, his younger sister is about to marry a man she met and schtupped as he was sitting shiva for his dead wife, his twin begins arranging blind dates for him that invariably go badly, and if that weren't enough, he's falling for the temptation of his wife's [married] best friend's ample charms even though the feelings aroused by Russ' beautiful, quirky guidance counselor are anything but curricular. And so he tries to move beyond the anger, sadness, and self-pity overwhelming him, even though he's equally sad that one day, when he's moved on and has a happy new life and family, all he'll have of Hailey are minor memories.

Despite his being totally fucked up, Doug Parker is an appealing hero. Here's a guy who never believed he'd end up with a woman like Hailey, a guy who's smart - well, a smart-ass, anyway - funny, and a keen observer of human nature. He may think badly of other people, but he never believes worse about others than he thinks about himself...and how attractive is that? Though his relatives are not as fully rendered, all are well drawn, and a few scenes, involving either his father or his step-son, are stand-outs. While the story does veer toward the melodramatic near the end, all can be forgiven because two of those terrific scenes occur as a result.

Jonathan Tropper doesn't write absurdist fiction, but it's high praise indeed that How to Talk to a Widower reminds me in some ways of Christopher Moore's marvelous A Dirty Job. Both authors created hilarity from the dark premise of a beloved wife's death. Both authors appeal to those of us who are "wordies," readers who enjoy the use of language itself, but Moore's novel, while it does have moments of poignance, wasn't written to provoke the same feelings of tenderness Tropper achieves in his pathos-filled comedy. Inappropriate it may be, but brilliantly, funnily so. Thank you, James, for lending me your copy.

How to Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper

Favorite Opening Line Meme

Just last week a beautiful high school student and her mom came to me to buy a copy of Moby Dick. I mentioned that according to American Book Review, the opening line of Melville's book is considered the best opening line from a novel. I said that my own personal favorite opening line was from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which landed on the same list at number two. The girl smiled, blushed madly, and said she was working on a scene for a one-act play competition based on it, her favorite novel.

Favourite Opening Line Meme

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

There, in one line, is the essence of Jane Austen. The writing is crisp, witty, and that you "get" such a strong sense of voice from such a few words points to her skill.

My second favorite opening line was written by Margaret Mitchell: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were." It's a favorite line because not only is it a striking bit of prose, but it's so memorable. I've kept it in my mind since first reading Gone with the Wind in the fifth grade.

I like to do things in threes, so here's the opening that sits in third place on my list. Talk about threes...it's not actually the first line from Christopher Moore's Lamb, it's the third:"The first time I saw the man who would save the world he was sitting near the central well in Nazareth with a lizard hanging out of his mouth."

Thanks to Gail Carriger for tweeting about this meme, created on the never evil blog, which ends as follows:

I'd like you, nay I DEMAND you, to pimp this post everywhere and anywhere. After all the more favourite first lines we get the merrier! How fun would it be to run into a comment quoting a line you thought you were the only one to love? And wouldn't it be great if some of these opening lines inspire people to check out the book out of curiosity? So please help the cause.

Favorite Opening Line Meme

Working Under the Influence

Last night was my first shift in about two weeks, and a test of how well I'm feeling after being sick with whatever all week. While 90% of my respiritory symptoms have abated, that "cotton in the head" feeling remains as strong as it did last Monday.

The night started out strong; I hand-sold from my register a copy of Lisa Kleypas' Then Came You almost immediately to a woman who'd never read the author's earlier work. I noticed that of the 48 copies of Changeless, ten had already been sold. Though I did sell two more, we lost two double sales to customers who would have tried Changeless if they could also have bought Soulless. Needles to say, I short-listed several additional copies of Soulless.

As for recommendations, I made one couple pretty happy (I'm not quite sure what it was they bought that tipped me off) when I mentioned the up-coming reissue of a few of Mary Alice Monroe's best. As I talked to them about her, the husband realized his wife had loved The Beach House (sweet, right?), so when I handed them a slip of paper with Sweetgrass, Swimming Lessons, and Time Is a River hand-written on it, I knew I'd made a future sale. I also know that the next time another couple returns, they will take a strong look at Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job and Lamb (another hand-written slip of paper)...it's not a huge leap from Spencer Quinn's Dog Gone It to Moore's absurdist humor. I hope my Sandman Slim recommendation (the mass market release for Richard Kadrey's book comes out late this month) does the same magic for the guy who bought some Jim Butcher...he seemed intrigued and appreciative with his hand-written slip of paper.

I've gotten into the habit of trying to recommend something to as many customers as possible based on what they buy. For most of them this is a novel experience, but for me it's very natural. I talk to just about everyone who checks out at my station unless a line requires I move it along. My philosophy is that this type of personalized customer service is what brings people back to the store. I don't know if this is true, but it feels right. I do know that I have some "returning" customers who actually carry my lists around with them...checking titles/authors off as they read them, and adding/buying based on new recommendations. On the other hand, none of the notes from customers lauding particular booksellers that are pinned to the break room bulletin board are for me.

Not at all great on the selling of memberships, though; just one new one and one renewal in 3.5 hours spent cashiering. At the start of the month, that's pretty dismal (if you buy a membership early in the month, it's like getting an extra month for free, which can be a strong selling point). But the biggest "cotton in the head" moment came when I attempted to wrap a book for a customer to give as a gift. We had some pretty paper not on the big roll attached to the wall like toilet paper so I decided to use it. Unfortunately, I mis-measured not once but twice (horribly embarrassing). Certainly my least stellar moment of the evening, although that I was sent back to re-work several shelves during nightly store recovery was another suckie event because, hey, it's not exactly rocket science.

I noticed that we have not received our ten copies of Chaos Bites, which I would dearly love to sell like mad. Alas, we have precisely one copy each of books 1 - 3 in Handeland's Phoenix Chronicles, so it's going to be very tough going to move these because this series remains a total buried treasure. With such strong sales so far for Changeless at the bookstore, I feel as though the pressure is off me to sell it like a maniac, so my investment has totally shifted to Handeland's urban fantasy series. For the first and only time since leaving AAR I wish I still had access to its thousands of readers in order to extoll the series' virtues. Why, exactly, I'm not sure, but it's almost become an obsession for me to see this series take off at the level of Keri Arthur's Riley Jenson books.

Luckily I have more hours this next week than the 5.5 I had for the week just ended, but shifts are still in short supply. If I were to judge by iPad-mania, the recession must have been rescinded, but considering how hard it is to sell memberships these days, I guess not.

We'll see how it goes Tuesday evening. With any luck, there won't be any cotton in my head.

Finally, it's very odd to blog knowing that barely anybody reads this. Regardless, I'm going to keep at it...at least for a while.

Working Under the Influence

Christopher Moore...in Case You Missed It

Major fan-girl here for absurdist fiction author Christopher Moore. A Dirty Job is my favorite, even though it's tough to convince somebody that hilarity ensues after a man's wife dies in childbirth. Next in my love-fest with the author are Bloodsucking Fiends, which was my introduction to Moore - thanks Mary! - and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, followed by You Suck and Fluke: I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings. Although for my friend Gail last year's Fool supplanted A Dirty Job, I feel as though I need to re-read King Lear to do it justice, and simply haven't had the time. I do plan to read the brand-spanking-new Bite Me, though - which follows Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck in a series - as soon as possible. While the second book wasn't as fantabulous as the first, the excerpt for the third looks hilarious.

Lamb, btw, is the perfect book for any friend with a great sense of humor, whether or not they read a lot of fiction. I suggested it for my husband, who reads a lot of dry crap for his law practice and so doesn't do a lot of recreational reading, and now he's convinced "this guy writes like me."

Anyway, before I digress further...Christopher Moore wrote a short piece for the Huffington Post a couple of weeks ago. If you blinked, you probably missed OMFG, Horatio, in which he writes about language. If you like Moore, surely one of the reasons you do is that he's a master wordsmith, something I got into when I interviewed him a few years ago. I hope he writes more for HuffPo in the future; OMFG is a good start.

Christopher Moore...in Case You Missed It

April Book Buys

Of the ten books on my wish list, four were available digitally. Looking at AAR's list of releases for April, though, reminded me of one other book I wanted, which supplanted one of those four (Bulls Island). Here then are my ebook downloads for April.

I also downloaded a digital copy of Metrophage, Richard Kadrey's first book. It, like Butcher Bird is available for free...just go to Kadrey's site. I don't know anything, really, about these books, but was such a fan of Sandman Slim that I thought I'd grab 'em while I could. Meanwhile, Kill the Dead, the Sandman sequel is set to be released later this year...I think in October.

I'm most anxious for a copy of Chaos Bites, but the two earlier books in Handeland's series were delayed digitally, so I may give in and buy the print release to read as soon as this special review project for PW is complete.

As for the others, well, I do have Changeless in manuscript form. An unacceptable version, to be sure, which at some point I'll need to rectify, but at least I've already read it.

And now I'm off to finish reviewing the second special project book (read it yesterday)...three to go with the clock running out.

April Book Buys

Books To Look For

I've been very vocal about my love for Gail Carriger's Soulless, my only Publishers Weekly starred review for 2009. And I've hand-sold quite hard Lori Handeland's Phoenix Chronicles. At the bookstore I hand-sold about 50 copies to date of the former - and because of that sales record the store will be sent roughly the same number of copies of the sequel, Changeless. As for Handeland's series, I've sold roughly 3 1/2 dozen of book one, somewhat less of book two, and less still of book three.

Part of the problem is that with an urban fantasy series, you can't sell books two or three without selling book one. Because we haven't had many copies of each book at one time, I can't often do what I managed to do during my last two shifts: sell all three together. Most readers new to the series, though, take a slower approach and simply buy book one. When they come back, we don't have books two or three, and they end up ordering copies online, or they go elsewhere. It's tough because the series is very much a sleeper; I can only hope it catches on, and with Keri Arthur's Riley Jenson series coming to an end in June, there will be one less series with which it must compete.

Last week I read Changeless, which is terrifically funny, very visually Steampunkish, and, like Soulless before it, pitch perfect. The cliffhanger ending is its only flaw, but I'm sure all will be resolved in book three (Blameless), to be published at the end of summer. But back to Changeless...there's a moment during which a rather clueless character remarks about the love between "Pyramid and Thirsty" that so reminded me of A Midsummer Night's Dream that I marveled at Carriger's skill. (My daughter has so far been the only one to "get" the reference, which surprised me as those I asked were literate folk.)

I've not yet read Chaos Bites, although I did read the excerpt Handeland has up on her site. As expected, it was exciting, intriguing, and sexy, and I look forward to reading it as soon as it goes on sale. Because it's such a sleeper series, though, I worry about its long-term success and whether or not the author will be given the opportunity to take it where she wants it to go. At the author's website, just one title (Demons at the Gate) is listed beyond Chaos Bites...I hope the series won't end there.

So here are covers of both books, with links to the author's sites, as well as some of the other books I'm looking forward to in the near future:

What are you looking forward to reading...and if you read urban fantasy, can I convince you to try The Phoenix Chronicles?

Books To Look For