Stages of Grief

That was one of the worst things about losing your wife, I found: your wife is the very person you want to discuss it all with.

Not many authors can write an ironic, funny, touching and perceptive novel about the grief of losing one’s spouse, but Anne Tyler is one of them.

The Beginner’s Goodbye is written in the voice of Aaron, a man in his thirties whose crippled arm and leg has led to him being dominated and fussed over by his mother and older sister all his life. He works in his family’s vanity press as an editor. The one major success of the press is the Beginner’s series:

something on the order of the Dummies books, but without the cheerleader tone of voice — more dignified. And far more classily designed, with deckle-edged pages and uniform hard-backed bindings wrapped in expensive, glossy covers. Also, we were more focused.

It’s an entertaining idea, and it made me smile to read about The Beginner’s Soups, The Beginner’s Spice Cabinet, and The Beginner’s Colicky Baby. While researching The Beginner’s Cancer (!), Aaron meets Dorothy, an oncologist whose matter-of-fact reaction to his crippled arm is startlingly comforting. Dorothy is eight years older than Aaron, dresses for comfort and practicality rather than style, and is not fussy. Tyler writes so well about people who might be thought misfits: the awkward dates and conversations between Aaron and Dorothy are sweetly touching and very realistic.

The couple has been married twelve years when a tree falls on their house, and Dorothy dies. (This is not a spoiler: it becomes evident on the first page that Dorothy has passed away.) The house is seriously damaged, and Aaron moves to his sister’s house for some months. He’s (sort-of) managing the quotidian details of his life, such as going to work and editing books, but he’s obviously in shock, and dealing with his grief in a way that seems odd to the people around. There’s a lovely section where Aaron is handling the endless casseroles and pasta bakes that turn up at his door: noting them down, putting them in the trash, and sending thank-you notes. Over time

The casseroles started thinning out and the letters stopped. Could people move on that easily?’

Aaron’s friends and family try to nudge him along. There’s an amusing scene where two of his male friends, formerly unknown to each other, invite him to dinner and have busy conversations in which they try to avoid mentioning their own wives. As always with Tyler’s writing, one can smile at the situation while also seeing the awkward good intentions of the characters.

Then Dorothy starts appearing to him.

The strangest thing about my wife’s return from the dead was how other people responded.

Dorothy sometimes walks or sits beside him without a word, but sometimes they have a perfectly natural conversation. Over the course of their conversations, Aaron starts examining his own behaviour towards Dorothy, and develops a growing self-awareness about the ways in which he was emotionally unsupportive of Dorothy’s perfectly reasonable desires.

This short, deceptively simple book is insightful and elegant.

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