The Beginner's Goodbye

The narrator of Anne Tyler’s The Beginner’s Goodbye, Aaron Woolcott, is crippled in his right arm and leg as the result of a childhood virus. He always tells everyone that he can get by just fine. Which he does. Unfortunately his real crippling lies deeper; a lifetime of fending off solicitous mothers, sisters, and sympathetic young women has left him, perhaps not surprisingly, isolated emotionally. With the sudden and unexpected death of his wife, Dr Dorothy Rosales, who is literally flattened when a huge tree comes crashing through the sunroom of the house, Aaron finds himself bereft. But of what he is bereft?

In typical Tyler fashion, this novel is filled with unusual individuals who are presented as run-of-the-mill. Dramatic show more action, even action as dramatic as trees crashing through houses, is muted. Interior thoughts and self-doubt predominate. And there is a gentle sprinkling of light humour and passing psychological insight.

Somewhat unusually, there is a ghost lurking in this novel. Not the much talked about visions of Dorothy that Aaron experiences periodically during the year following her death. Rather, it is the character of Dorothy herself. She is endlessly enigmatic and always just out of reach. Who is this woman? She is an Oncologist of Hispanic origin with a respected medical practice. She is curiously muffled emotionally and strangely unpractised in social interaction. Very curiously (but entirely unexplored in the novel) even after years of marriage, Aaron has never met Dorothy’s family. Aaron’s call to her brother with the news of her death is his first occasion of speaking to him. I wanted to learn a great deal more about this woman. Alas, this is Aaron’s story and he either doesn’t know anything more about his wife, or doesn’t want to know.

As ever, when you try to situate a new Anne Tyler work within the range of her (now 19) novels, you find that it fits somewhere in the middle. As do all of the others. Gently recommended (for lovers of Anne Tyler novels). show less

I know I am in the minority of people who did not find this story compelling. I really wanted to enjoy this book. The main character, although grieving the death of his wife (who dies in the most absurd, unbelievable fashion), is not an easy person to like. His oddities and dismissive manner to those who offer to help him were rather insulting. Since I was not persuaded to feel empathy, his story remained annoying right to the very end. Again, it was people in his life to whom I felt compassion. Some people have recommended a second read to enjoy this book. I can't imagine how doing so would change my "first impression" of Aaron!

Http://bookwormreviewblog.blogspot.com

In her latest novel, ’The Beginner’s Goodbye,’ Anne Tyler portrays the American way of dealing with the death of a loved one….which is usually not too well.

Aaron loses his wife Dorothy in a freak accident when a tree falls on their house. One moment they’re a couple - not as compatible as they’d like, but still working at creating a good marriage - and then she’s gone and he’s alone. And Aaron, with support from family, friends, and neighbors, goes through shock, and sadness, and confusion, and all the other stages of grief that we know so well.

But Aaron is a quirky Tyler character in that magical Tyler Baltimore that only she seems able to locate. And his journey through grief, though sad, will also be enlightening for show more both protagonist and reader.

To say that Tyler is a master craftsman is an understatement. The novel’s first sentence says it all: “The strangest thing about my wife’s return from the dead was how other people reacted.”

Tyler’s is a kinder, gentler view of humankind….she sees us as we are and as we wish to be. Dorothy’s post-death visits force Aaron, once his grief has ebbed a bit, to give serious thought to their marriage and to his own failures and hopes.

Tyler tells us that death is a leveler; that it hurts; that it can’t be avoided. But that, with care, our lives, like Aaron’s, will go on.

(The publisher provided a review copy of this book.) show less

I remember the first time I saw a "Dummies" book. The concept seemed genius. Take an area of learning that was likely to be difficult or completely foreign for the average Joe and make it accessible and basic enough to be graspable; make it easy to learn. If I recall correctly, the books started out as a way into the new and exciting word of computer related things but because of their popularity, the success of their concept, and their immediate brand recognition, they quickly became ubiquitous as the entry level way into a whole variety of specialized areas, both technical and non-technical. And while they may seem less necessary now in a world of You Tube videos and other online tutorials, they served a real and previously untapped show more purpose when they came out. With them, you could learn to program a computer or build a container garden. You could learn everything you ever wanted to know about NASCAR or about anger management. They run the gamut from A to Z. Their scope was, and is, both practical and personal. But above and beyond whatever they purported to teach, there was a wealth of story in their existence. Why would someone need to consult them? What result will they lead the reader to in their pages? How will this new skill change the reader's life? In Anne Tyler's elegant novel The Beginner's Goodbye, she uses not Dummies Guides but their fictional counterpart, Beginner's Guides, to illuminate a life, a marriage, and grief.

Aaron Woolcott is a new widower. He uses his grief to hold himself aloof from others around him, including his sister Nandina. When he was a child, he suffered an illness that left him mildly disabled and he has long used his disability and frustration with what he sees as people's solicitude towards him to justify his unpleasant, often anti-social behaviour. When the novel opens, Aaron is devastated by his wife's untimely and unexpected death but it changes his curmudgeonly and prickly personality not at all. He is as unable or unwilling to accept kindness or help after Dorothy's death as he was before it. He intentionally keeps everyone at arm's length, believing that only the deceased Dorothy, practical, unfussy, and frumpy understood him. When he starts seeing her ghost, he is unsurprised by her reappearance but it prompts him to reexamine the life they lived. And it turns out that what he remembers may not be the way she saw it.

As Aaron comes to terms with his crippling loss, his sister and his co-workers at the family owned vanity press where he works at (they publish the Beginner's Guides to all sorts of things) try to offer him kindness and caring when all he wants is the space to be surly and bitter. Early on in the novel, his character comes across as distant and determined to be a martyr but he has to learn that while the grief is real and forever, the living must indeed go on living. There is no guide to get him through this terrible time in his life and Aaron chooses to stay at an emotional remove from everyone thinking that no one else can understand or appreciate the magnitude of his wrenching loss. This sort of clinical distance does keep the reader from finding Aaron an altogether appealing character, especially as his actions prove him to be rather a jerk and he starts to remember and reveal more about his marriage and his and Dorothy's roles in it. But because this is Anne Tyler, and because she's a gorgeous writer, you can't help but keep reading, wanting to know how Aaron will, in the end, learn to say goodbye to someone he might never have seen clearly in the first place, how he will go on with his life, and how he will change. The writing is spare and slow but the slow pacing serves the plot well and given the book's short length, the reader appreciates the chance to savor her time in the story. Tyler beautifully captures the loneliness and paralyzing inactivity, that fog that envelops a person after such a big loss. That she does it so well with Aaron, wounded in so many ways and not always sympathetic, is a testament to her skill here. This is an examination of life and death, perspective and change. It is quirky and wonderful. show less

?
Pause.
?

E stupido.

(Spoken with Italian accent, stress on first syllable.)

This is my first Anne Tyler book, and if I were to judge her works from this one alone, I would say it would be my last Anne Tyler book. I may not venture further, although admittedly that would be an unfair indictment of so prolific, and beloved, an author.

Much has been made about all that "blank space between the lines" -- that is, (I suppose) the implied wisdom. The much over-rated subtext. Apparently, she speaks volumes without saying anything. In my experience, the "blank lines" usually mean exactly what they look like -- blank space. Very few authors can manage the sub-text with any real credibility or panache. This happens to be one of those books where show more the subtext walked out the front door and kept walking, like the inimitable Harold Fry.

Not one of the characters is likeable, or understandable. There is no story here. I didn't connect at all with Aaron, nor could I have cared less whether his wife lived, died or visited him from the underworld with a dog barking at her heels. The characters are as nondescript and flavourless as blancmange. I questioned whether Aaron had any blood running in his veins at all. Ditto for the rest of the crew. I felt like I was playing with paper dolls -- and I do confess having more fun with the dolls, because you could change their outfits and have them go on fun (if imaginary) adventures.

It's a quick read, certainly. For those bath-tub lounger-readers, you barely have time to get into the tub before you have to get out, because the movie is over, in a manner of speaking. But a quick read does not a good book make.

It's hard to fathom why people insist on finding weighty matter where none exists. I suppose it's that longing deep within that begs to make sense of a senseless world, and so willy-nilly we ascribe meaning and substance to the clouds, seeing angels where only white puffs of ice crystals exist.

I will probably try another Anne Tyler novel. I can't believe that this is all there is to the much admired Tyler. show less

Loved this book. Appearances of Dorothy to Aaron after her death are beautifully described. Glorious mix of mundane and sublime. Amplifies questions about afterlife and meaning/purpose of life. Great ending: 'But i'm not so sure anymore that those who showed no surprise had forgotten she had died. maybe they remembered perfectly well. aybe they were just thinking, Of course. We go around and around in this world, and here we go again.

Anne Tyler was one of my first favorite authors, and though I have found myself a little disappointed in her last few books, this one was a triumph. She's so great at focusing in on the meaningful moments in her characters lives, and, by extension, life in general. The Beginner's Goodbye is an exploration of grief and healing, through the eyes of a character who is a fully realized, entirely unique person, who somehow manages to express perfectly the common human experience of learning how to live again after a loss that threatens to destroy us. Such a beautiful book!