The Widower's Tale Hardcover | Pages: 416 pages

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Original Title:	The Widowerʼs Tale
ISBN:	030737792X (ISBN13: 9780307377920)
Edition Language:	English
Setting:	Massachusetts(United States)

Narration During Books The Widower's Tale

In a historic farmhouse outside Boston, seventy-year-old Percy Darling is settling happily into retirement: reading novels, watching old movies, and swimming naked in his pond. His routines are disrupted, however, when he is persuaded to let a locally beloved preschool take over his barn. As Percy sees his rural refuge overrun by children, parents, and teachers, he must reexamine the solitary life he has made in the three decades since the sudden death of his wife. No longer can he remain aloof from his community, his two grown daughters, or, to his shock, the precarious joy of falling in love.
 
One relationship Percy treasures is the bond with his oldest grandchild, Robert, a premed student at Harvard. Robert has long assumed he will follow in the footsteps of his mother, a prominent physician, but he begins to question his ambitions when confronted by a charismatic roommate who preaches—and begins to practice—an extreme form of ecological activism, targeting Boston’s most affluent suburbs.
 
Meanwhile, two other men become fatefully involved with Percy and Robert: Ira, a gay teacher at the preschool, and Celestino, a Guatemalan gardener who works for Percy’s neighbor, each one striving to overcome a sense of personal exile. Choices made by all four men, as well as by the women around them, collide forcefully on one lovely spring evening, upending everyone’s lives, but none more radically than Percy’s.
 
With equal parts affection and satire, Julia Glass spins a captivating tale about the loyalties, rivalries, and secrets of a very particular family. Yet again, she plumbs the human heart brilliantly, dramatically, and movingly.

Point Of Books The Widower's Tale

Title	:	The Widower's Tale
Author	:	Julia Glass
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 416 pages
Published	:	September 7th 2010 by Pantheon (first published 2009)
Categories	:	Fiction. Contemporary. Family

Rating Of Books The Widower's Tale

Ratings: 3.66 From 10368 Users | 1458 Reviews

Piece Of Books The Widower's Tale

I loved every word of this densely written, thought provoking, moving, sad, happy novel. Julia Glass never writes light fluff. She is the thinking person's novelist and creates characters who are complicated, flawed, good and bad, like most people! There are plots and subplots, main characters and supporting ones, but all are well drawn and elicit some form of empathy from the readers. The story is told from more than one perspective, but mostly from that of Percival Darling, the widowed (though

The Widower's Tale is one of those books I closed wistfully, sad to say goodbye to all my new friends. The ensemble cast is headed by Percival Darling, a 70-year-old retired librarian from Harvard, and the widower of the title. At the start of the novel, he is confronted by drastic change in his life when he allows the barn adjacent to his historic Massachusetts home to be converted to a progressive pre-school. Meanwhile, he has to cope with two difficult daughters, a budding romance, and a

For me, this book dragged on and on and I really just couldn't wait to finish it. I disliked the way the story jumped - mid-chapter it would change directions completely and return to yet another thread. I also found the character of Turo unbelievable - as I did several other components of the story: After 30 years with no relationship, all of the sudden Percy is immediately comfortable in a new relationship? For me, there were too many side stories and character interactions - so that none were

I'm very bitter about this book: it got rave reviews for its touching character studies and perceptive social commentary, so I bought it and waited for a pleasant Friday evening to start reading. I made it through about six chapters and gave up, and I was PISSED. The main character is a 70-year-old man. He came to adulthood in the 50s, right? Here's how he talks to a salesgirl: "I'm having one of those -- what youngsters so blithely call 'a senior moment.' I thank you for your cordial

Julia Glass is one of my favorite authors. It's always with a bit of trepidation that I read new books from old favorites. The mysterious combination of my too-high hopes and the lower standard known authors must meet to be published often ends with disappointment.But not this time. I wouldn't say The Widower's Tale was Glass' best novel - she'll be hard pressed to outdo The Whole World Over, in my eyes - but I enjoyed every minute of this read.The plot is not something that I would have thought

This was the first time I've read Julia Glass, and I was awed by her character development and stunning prose. I love books that make me think, "Oh, how I wish I could write like this!" Glass's characters are authentic. They deal with their own foibles, beliefs, hurts and carefully guarded self-perspectives as they also attempt to maintain sometimes-fragile family relationships. I thoroughly enjoyed observing the process of Percy's emergence from 30 years of living in the past to reach a future

OH. MY. GOD. If I hadn't finished this book this morning I might have just had to not finish it. Yep. The only other book I ever didn't finish was Ulysses (and then I did read it a few years later). This is probably one of the most boring books I have picked up in the past 10 years. Seriously. I feel like I have finished a marathon on my hands and knees.It is long. And it is stupid. And it is boring. Glass's writing is overwrought and repetitive. Her main character is a 70 year old man with