The Widower's Tale

I've had trouble reading lately. Not because I don't have tons of times on my hands, but because Julia Glass' latest book, The Widower's Tale, was so absorbing, I wanted first to savor it and once I'd finished reading it, I found it hard to move on. This isn't really about a widower, exactly. I say that because I have a widowed friend who won't even touch a book with such a title. Yes, Percy Darling is a widower, has been for 40 years, and perhaps hasn't fully come to terms with his wife's death, but this book is more about the people around him than any personal sorrows he still harbors over Poppy's death.

I was struck again at how well Glass does in portraying such a variety of characters, how believable her gay, thirty year old preschool teacher is alongside 70 year old Percy. She also captures well Percy's 20 year old grandson and his dubious roommate, and the the landscaping illegal immigrant and various others. She must have taken my criticism of her last book very seriously indeed, when I felt she'd totally failed to capture a spry 90 year old in I See You Everywhere.

That's not to say I bought everything. I really didn't believe in Percy's late romance--not just because of the age gap, but perhaps because I simply didn't like the object of his affections. No, she didn't grow on me. Celestino, the illegal immigrant had a whiff of the "noble savage" to him which I found vaguely troubling and a little condescending, but I liked his character and his story line, so I forgive.

I appreciated the sense of danger that grandson Robert's roommate at Harvard brought to the picture with his extreme environmentalism, all while wishing to strangle him for throwing figurative monkey wrenches in Robert's well-laid plans. The characters are what drive this book, and they all revolve around Percy, recently retired librarian (at Harvard's Widener). I always like a literary host to any gathering and Percy fills that in spades, making witicisms, even when uncalled for, and gadding about his wealthy, landed gentry town. He agrees to rent his barn to a unfortunately named preschool--Elves and Fairies--while expecting to maintain his privacy and routine. The first thing to go, of course, is his habit of swimming naked in his pond. That is only the first of many of his habits to fall and at first it seems Percy will fail at retired life. He has events and people thrust upon him at uncomfortable regularity, but he's no true curmudgeon after all. He just plays one to the choir and meddles when he can. He is a good father to his very different daughters, a good friend and mentor to those who need it, and in the end, he holds the future of many in his still-capable hands.

The Widower's Tale does offer a sense of endings and sadness, as befits its title, but it's not of death or absence. It's more that the choices we make in life become our story.