The Widower's Notebook
A Memoir
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4.9 • 7 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Written with unexpected humor and great warmth, The Widower's Notebook is a portrait of a marriage, an account of the complexities of finding oneself single again after losing your spouse, and a story of the enduring power of familial love.
"This is deeply moving ... beautifully written and modulated, with a dollop of droll, black humor. It is such an achievement, like running uphill against a strong wind."--Joyce Carol Oates
On a summer day in New York Jonathan Santlofer discovers his wife, Joy, gasping for breath on their living room couch. After a frenzied 911 call, an ambulance race across Manhattan, and hours pacing in a hospital waiting room, a doctor finally delivers the fateful news. Consumed by grief, Jonathan desperately tries to pursue life as he always had--writing, social engagements, and working on his art--but finds it nearly impossible to admit his deep feelings of loss to anyone, not even his to beloved daughter, Doria, or to himself.
As Jonathan grieves and heals, he tries to unravel what happened to Joy, a journey that will take him nearly two years.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Writer and artist Santlofer (The Death Artist), has produced a quiet stunner of a memoir about the rocky shoals of the widower's life. The book's opening scene, in which his wife, Joy, dies suddenly following an operation, is strobed with cinematic verve: "I catch a last glimpse of my wife on the stretcher... all of this in split seconds, like frames of a silent movie before the emergency room doors slam shut." From there, Santlofer writes of being "sick with a grief that has only just begun" before recounting life as an unexpected widower numbly going through funeral routines, reaffirming his relationship with his adult daughter, nervously re-entering the dating world, finishing his wife's book on the history of New York food (Food City) with asides on the inner turmoil he carefully hides from the world: "I'd lost my sounding board, my reality check, my echo." Although the author is frequently lost in a fog of detachment, the book never loses momentum, thanks in large part to his vivid writing and lack of self-indulgence. Santlofer includes a cringeworthy though hilarious chapter called "Stupid Things Said by Smart People," which lists thoughtless things people said to him while he was in mourning ("At least your wife avoided a late-in-life divorce," a neighbor bafflingly told him). This is a tender, moving, and resonant account of how life continues whether one wants it to or not.
