How to Talk to a Widower: A Novel (Bantam Discovery)

Product Description

“A resigned yet hopeful examination of grief with a side of human absurdity . . . warm and modestly knowing, with a wisecracking slacker hero.”—Kirkus Reviews
Doug Parker is a widower at age twenty-nine, and in his quiet town, that makes him the object of sympathy, curiosity, and in some cases even unbridled desire. But Doug has more urgent things on his mind, such as his sixteen-year-old stepson, Russ, a once-sweet kid who is now getting into increasingly serious trouble. As Doug starts dipping his toes into the shark-infested waters of the second-time-around dating scene, it isn’t long before his new life is spinning hopelessly out of control, cutting a harrowing and often humorous swath of sexual missteps and escalating chaos across a suburban landscape.
How to Talk to a Widower is a stunning novel of love, lust, and loss that
USA Today hails as “hilarious but emotion-packed.”

Praise for How to Talk to a Widower

“[A] winning tale about a man raising his stepson after his wife dies.”
—People

“Part of
Widower’s charm is that there’s no happily ever after, no Cinderella-catches-the-fella ending.”
 —USA Today 
“A mixture of mourning and mockery . . . surprisingly moving.”
—Entertainment Weekly

Review

“Tropper has the twentysomething guy thing down to a science. His prose is funny and insightful, his characters quirky and just a bit off-balance but decent enough to take to our hearts.”—
Booklist”A portrait of a modern guy in crisis…. Alternately flippant and sad.”—
Publishers Weekly“Most resembles Lolly Winston’s light, bright
Good Grief…. [An] entertaining new contribution to lad lit.”—
Miami Herald

About the Author

Jonathan Tropper is the author of
Everything Changes, The Book of Joe, which was a BookSense selection, 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 optioned by Paramount Pictures, and
Everything Changes and
The Book of Joe are also in development as feature films.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter OneRuss is stoned. You can see it in the whites of his eyes, which are actually more of a glazed pink under the flickering yellow porch light, in the dark discs of his dilated pupils, in the way his eyelids hang sluggishly at half-mast, and in the careless manner in which he leans nonchalantly against the pissed-off cop that is propping him up at my front door, like they’re drinking buddies staggering out into the night after last call. It’s just past midnight, and when the doorbell rang I was sprawled out in my usual position on the couch, half asleep but entirely drunk, torturing myself by tearing memories out of my mind at random like matches from a book, striking them one at a time and drowsily setting myself on fire.

“What happened?” I say.

“He got into a fight with some other kids down at the 7-Eleven,” the cop says, holding on to the top of Russ’s arm. And now I can see the lacerations and bruises on Russ’s face, the angry sickle-shaped scratch across his neck. His black T-shirt has been stretched beyond repair and torn at the neck, and his ear is bleeding where one of his earrings was snagged.

“You okay?” I say to Russ.

“Fuck you, Doug.”

It’s been a while since I last saw him, and he’s cultivated some facial hair, a rough little soul patch just beneath his bottom lip.

“You’re not his father?” the cop says.

“No. I’m not.” I rub my eyes with my fists, trying to gather my wits about me. The bourbon had been singing me its final lullaby, and in the freshly shattered stillness, everything still feels like it’s underwater.

“He said you were his father.”

“He kind of disowned me,” Russ says bitterly.

“I’m his stepfather,” I say. “I used to be, anyway.”

“You used to be.” The cop says this with the expression of someone who’s tasted some bad Thai food, and gives me a hard look. He’s a big guy—you’d have to be to