The Beginner's Goodbye
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...
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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. “Like a modern Jane Austen, Tyler creates small worlds [depicting] the intimate bonds of friendship and family.”—USA Today “An absolute charmer of a novel . . . With sparkling prose . . . [Anne] Tyler gets at the beating heart of what it means to lose someone, to say goodbye.”—The Boston Globe “Classic Tyler . . . The wonder of Anne Tyler is how consistently clear-eyed and truthful she remains about the nature of families and especially marriage.”—Los Angeles Times “Beautifully intricate . . . By the exquisitely romantic emotional climax [an] ordinary life has bloomed into an opera.”—Entertainment Weekly Don’t miss the conversation between Anne Tyler and Robb Forman Dew at the back of the book.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780345533357 (0345533356)
ASIN: 345533356
Publish date: January 29th 2013
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Pages no: 224
Edition language: English
THAT was a waste of time. True, I was astounded again at Tyler's ability to make absolutely quotidian duty sound thrilling, but 60 pages from the end, it never broached its alleged topic and never would. Hitchcock famously said that if you show a bomb in the first scene, it has to go off by the end,...
Aaron and Dorothy married against objections from his family and friends, but he loved her. When a tree crashes through the roof of their home and kills Dorothy, those family and friends do not know how to reach out to Aaron as he grieves. Aaron’s family owns a publishing company specializing in “...
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The Beginner's Goodbye is a real return to form for Anne Tyler. Fans of her writing will be delighted to see so many of her signature tropes dusted off and given a new lease of life. There's the socially inept protagonist, his domineering sister who secretly begins dating one of his acquaintances, t...
What a nice book! Anne Tyler creates characters who make you reflect upon your own life. I walked away remembering why I love my husband and appreciate my marriage so much. More than a novella about grief, the simple prose allows you to join in on Aaron's journey and reflect on how you might be i...