The Beginner's Goodbye

The Beginner's Goodbye

by Anne Tyler (Author)

Synopsis

When Dorothy came back from the dead, Aaron noticed that some people simply ignored the fact; some seemed to have forgotten she'd died in the first place; and others just walked straight on by. The accident that killed Dorothy - involving an oak tree, a sun porch and some elusive biscuits - leaves Aaron bereft and the house a wreck. As those around him fuss and flap and bring him casserole after casserole, Aaron ploughs on. He busies himself with work at the family firm, a publisher with a successful line in 'Beginner's Guides' to every stage and aspect of life. But then Dorothy starts to materialize in the oddest places. At first, she only comes for a short while, leaving Aaron longing for more. Gradually she stays for longer, and as they talk they also bicker ... The cracks that start to reappear in their perfectly normal marriage are as well worn and familiar to Aaron as Dorothy herself. As Aaron starts to emerge from his grief, they are also a reassuringly poignant reminder that life may move on, but some things will forever remain the same.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Published: 05 Apr 2012

ISBN 10: 0701187204
ISBN 13: 9780701187200
Book Overview: An Anne Tyler gem: a story about love, about marriage, about two ordinary people so intertwined they cannot be separated - even by death ...

Media Reviews
Anne Tyler draws a comedy that is not so much brilliant as luminous - its observant sharpness sweetened by a generous understanding of human fallibility * Jane Shilling, Daily Telegraph *
A brilliant writer of emotionally sophisticated novels, funny, tragic, wise * Lynne Truss, Independent *
One of my favourite authors, one of the very few I rush out to buy in hardback * Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday *
Anne Tyler is a novelist who has elevated pitch-perfect observation of everyday detail into an art form * Elizabeth Day, Observer *
Out of this everyday material she spins gold: stories so achingly truthful, so achingly funny, so sad and so real that you can only marvel * Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail *
Author Bio
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years, Back When We Were Grownups, A Patchwork Planet, The Amateur Marriage, Digging to America, A Spool of Blue Thread and Vinegar Girl. In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English'; in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence; and in 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was a Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize.