Santlofer - The widowers notebook: a memoir

The Widowers Notebook, Jonathan Santlofers searingly truthful chronicle of mortality, is, among its wonders, a book about the preciousness of life and love, rendered all the more heart-wrenching, and all the more vital, by a loss almost beyond imagining. Its a true tragic beauty.

Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Hours

The Widowers Notebook is a searing rendition of the complex relationship between men and griefan intense despair that is too often starved for words. This chronicle of devastation is itself devastating, a deeply powerful and unflinchingly honest report of how painfully and strangely life continues in the wake of a sudden, tragic death.

Andrew Solomon, National Book Award winner

Wrenching, heartbreaking, intense, and emotionalbut valuable, too: were all approaching the age where this will happen to usor to others because of usand understanding that it can be dealt with is consoling. I dont know how Santlofer found the fortitude to write this, but Im deeply grateful he did. I think the world is a better place with this book in it.

Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author

[The Widowers Notebook] is stunning, harrowing, un-put-down-able.... Jonathan Santlofer finds language that is immediate and intimate for the irreconcilable trauma of loss. Without pause he captures the shattered time that is griefthis book is fearless, brave for its humanity, honesty, love. Santlofer brings the reader into his heart, sharing all the things that one feels but dares not say aloud, all that one wants to know but cant ask of themselves, of those around them, of their lost loved one.

A. M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven

The Widowers Notebook is an intimate, honest, heart-wrenching, and at times even funny account of grieving as well as the memoir of a long, satisfying, loving marriage. This is an important and welcome addition to the literature of loss and grief from the male point of view. I will be giving this Notebook to friends reeling from loss but also to old and new couples who need models of how to weather the many little deaths and losses that occur as they journey a life together. Santlofer has given us a brave, beautiful gift, heartfelt and invaluable.

Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of How the Garca Girls Lost Their Accents and Saving the World

Jonathan Santlofer recounts with courage, candor, and sometimes wicked gallows humor how he went on living after the sudden death of his beloved wife, Joy. With no blueprint for mourningespecially for menSantlofer conveys the isolating muddle of grieving, the awkwardness of some friends versus the absolute heroism of others, and the difficulty of parenting through loss. This story of the worst kind of anguish and the strongest bonds of love will break your heart and heal it back up again.

Bliss Broyard, award-winning author of One Drop and My Father, Dancing

Jonathan Santlofer, with painful honesty, renders real grief in all its sprawl and inconsolable intensity.

Edmund White, author of A Boys Own Story

Jonathan Santlofer writes with a keen artists eye about the devastating whirlwind of grief after the unexpected death of his beloved wife, Joy. Santlofer depicts the aftermath of his wifes death with careful and evocative detail. I, too, mourn her loss even as I celebrate that such love, such partnership, existed at all.

Julie Barton, New York Times bestselling author of Dog Medicine

Jonathan Santlofers book is a miraculous act of seeing, in words and in drawingsof reconstituting, in a work of art, what his wife, Joy, was like and what their marriage was like and what the loss has been. A riveting memoir of grief, and an indelible portrait of a long and deeply good marriage.

Joan Wickersham, National Book Award finalist and author of The Suicide Index

A brave book! A truthful and poignant account of an unexpected death filled with wisdom about life and a mans struggle to be allowed to grieve.

Sheila Kohler, author of Once We Were Sisters

Jonathan Santlofers stunning The Widowers Notebook raises all the blinds on immense and sudden loss, bringing light to all its dark corners. In so doing, he offers a deeply moving, often funny, always big-hearted portraitnot just of grief but of a long and rich marriage brought to vivid life, and of a mighty father-and-daughter relationship both tested and enduring. A true gift.

Megan Abbott, bestselling author of You Will Know Me

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Copyright 2018 by Jonathan Santlofer

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Illustrations by the author.

Drawing on page 68 based on a photograph by Annie Powers. Published by arrangement with Annie Powers.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2017041797 (print)

ISBN 9780143132493 (pbk.)

ISBN 9780525504443 (ebook)

Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone.

Cover design and hand lettering: Olga Grlic

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For Joy Santlofer: wife, mother, sister, writer, friend. You are greatly missed.

And for our daughter, Doria, the brightest light.