The Beginner’s Goodbye by Anne Tyler, Chatto & Windus, $29.95
Aaron Woolcott works in the family’s small publishing business writing beginner’s guides to just about everything, but when his wife Dorothy is killed mid-argument by a falling oak tree he doesn’t have a clue where to start.
Dorothy’s apparent return from the dead just under a year later doesn’t perturb him but he does find the reactions of others a little strange.
They prefer not to look at her, even when she gives one of her characteristic dry chuckles.
The Beginner’s Goodbye is a quietly quirky post-mortem of an unremarkable marriage. Aaron tells his story in the first person, and as he slowly begins to understand his relationship, his dead wife and himself, so do we.
Dead Dorothy is less happy with her marriage than she seemed to be in life.
But her intermittent reappearances give her and Aaron time to resolve their differences and lost opportunities. A wise, gently funny, charming novel.
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