An Available Man: Platinum Readers Circle (Center Point)

en Limba Engleză Hardback – 31 mar 2012

In this tender and funny novel, award-winning author Hilma Wolitzer mines the unpredictable fallout of suddenly becoming single later in life, and the chaos and joys of falling in love the second time around. When Edward Schuyler, a modest and bookish sixty-two-year-old science teacher, is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and desirable creature. Edward receives phone calls from widows seeking love, or at least lunch, while well-meaning friends try to set him up at dinner parties. Even an attractive married neighbor offers herself to him.

The problem is that Edward doesn’t feel available. He’s still mourning his beloved wife, Bee, and prefers solitude and the familiar routine of work, gardening, and bird-watching. But then his stepchildren surprise him by placing a personal ad in The New York Review of Books on his behalf. Soon the letters flood in, and Edward is torn between his loyalty to Bee’s memory and his growing longing for connection. Gradually, reluctantly, he begins dating (“dating after death,” as one correspondent puts it), and his encounters are variously startling, comical, and sad. Just when Edward thinks he has the game figured out, a chance meeting proves that love always arrives when it’s least expected.

With wit, warmth, and a keen understanding of the heart, An Available Man explores aspects of loneliness and togetherness, and the difference in the options open to men and women of a certain age. Most of all, the novel celebrates the endurance of love, and its thrilling capacity to bloom anew.

Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.

“Funny, wise and touching.”—The Washington Post

“Wonderful . . . [Hilma] Wolitzer’s vision of the world, for all its sorrow, is often hilarious and always compassionate.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Smart and poignant, An Available Man explores some universal truths—that the past is never past, life is for the living, and dating is really, really hard.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

“Charming . . . Wolitzer is a champ at the closely observed, droll novel of manners.”—NPR

“[Hilma Wolitzer is an] American literary treasure.”—The Boston Globe

“A deeply satisfying story of love lost and found.”—Bookreporter

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9781611733594
ISBN-10: 1611733596
Pagini: 335
Dimensiuni: 147 x 216 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.51 kg
Ediția:Text mare
Editura: Center Point
Seria Platinum Readers Circle (Center Point)

Recenzii

Praise for An Available Man

“Wonderful new novel… often hilarious and always compassionate.”--The New York Times Book Review
"Charming...affecting...emotionally layered"--Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
“Tender, witty…smart and poignant, An Available Man explores some universal truths—that the past is never past, life is for the living, and dating is really, really hard.”--O, the Oprah Magazine
“[Hilma Wolitzer is an] American literary treasure…Wolitzer uses her gift for her chosen medium, long-form fiction, to deliver a message far broader than this deceptively accessible novel first seems to address. An Available Man is not just a cautionary tale of geriatric loneliness and sex. It’s a meditation - and then, a breathtaking roller-coaster ride, and then, a meditation again - on what we lose when we allow loss and longing to make us unavailable to ourselves.”--Boston Globe
“[F]unny, wise and touching… Wolitzer writes so well and knows so much that her books combine absurdity with poignancy in a deft and captivating way.”—The Washington Post

“Impressively readable… Wolitzer is such a capable storyteller. …(S)ucceeds, precisely because the writer understands that it's not a childish insistence on finding everything delightful but the full complexity of experience that gives a romance, late-life or otherwise, its real beauty.”—Philadelphia Enquirer
“Wolitzer is, by turns, funny, shocking, poignant and wise…”--Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Heartbreaking, maddening, comical, and poignant…This sweet story of a man’s diving back into the dating pool at an older age will especially appeal to readers in that demographic. ”--Library Journal
“I absolutely loved An Available Man (and not, I swear, because I’m partial to widowers). For a start, Edward Schuyler is someone I desperately wish I could invite to my next dinner party (and not, I swear, because there are half a dozen women I’d like him to meet). This is a book to savor page by page, filled with astute detail, both comic and mournful, about what it’s like to be middle-aged and lonely yet not give up on the search for love.”—Julia Glass, author of The Widower’s Tale and the National Book Award-winning Three Junes

“Wolitzer [writes] of the pain of losing a partner and its aftermath . . . with remarkable insight, grace, and humor. A warm, keenly incisive view of life’s vicissitudes by a writer too seldom heard from.”—Booklist
“Comic, tender, and delicious, in An Available Man, the broken-hearted rise again to heal and find love anew. Hilma Wolitzer is a national treasure, and she’s at her best here in the story of Edward Schuyler, a grieving widower who must put down his binoculars to see the world with new eyes. You will love it!”—Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Big Stone Gap and Very Valentine

“Wolitzer’s rapturously charming look at love in late life plumbs the depths of grief and longing to reveal the heady shine of new possibilities. What can I say? With its cast of exuberantly alive characters and a wise and witty plot, this book is love at first sight.”—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You

“Hilma Wolitzer is a master of the domestic world, and her writing is graceful, stylish, intelligent and so, so funny! This is a lovely novel, an elegant bouquet of family life, made up of tenderness and confusion, grief and solace, uncertainty and commitment, and the unexpectedness of love.”—Roxana Robinson, author of Cost

“I’m completely in love with this particular available man, and with the words that brought him to life for me. This book is very dear to my heart. What a gratifying read: wit! poignancy! authenticity! I asked myself constantly, How does Hilma Wolitzer do it?”—Elinor Lipman, author of Then She Found Me
“Families are Wolitzer’s turf, and she’s an observant and often humorous chronicler of domesticity and the stuff that comes with it: illness, loss, boredom, crankiness, and, on good days, love.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Hardcover edition.

Notă biografică

Hilma Wolitzer is the author of several novels, including Summer Reading, The Doctor’s Daughter, Hearts, Ending, and Tunnel of Love, as well as a nonfiction book, The Company of Writers. She is a recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa, New York University, and Columbia University.

From the Hardcover edition.

Extras

1

Out of the Woodwork

Edward Schuyler was ironing his oldest blue oxford shirtin the living room on a Saturday afternoon when the first telephone call came.He'd taken up ironing a few months before, not long after his wife, Bee, haddied. That happened in early summer, when school was out, and he couldn'tconcentrate on anything besides his grief and longing. At first, he onlypressed things of hers that he'd found in a basket of tangled clean clothing inthe laundry room. He had thought of it then as a way of reconnecting with herwhen she was so irrevocably gone, when he couldn't even will her into hisdreams.

And she did come back in a rush of disordered memories ashe stood at the ironing board. But he had no control over what he remembered,sometimes seeing her when they first met, or years later in her flowered chintzchair across the room, talking on the telephone and kneading the dog's bellywith her bare feet-Bee called it multitasking-or in the last days of her life,pausing so long between breaths that he found himself holding his own breathuntil she began again.

Still, this random collage of their days together wasbetter than nothing, and it was oddly comforting to smooth the wrinkles out ofher blouses, to restore their collapsed bosoms and sleeves and hang them in hercloset, where they looked orderly, expectant. And he liked the hiss of steam inthe quiet house and the yeasty smell of the scorched cloth.

Now he lay the iron down on the trivet and, with Bingo,the elderly dog, padding right behind him, went into the kitchen to answer thephone. Without his reading glasses, which didn't appear to be anywhere, Edward couldn'tmake out the caller I.D. But when he said hello there was no reply, and heassumed he'd hear one of those recorded messages from someone running forsomething. It was late October, after all. Half his mail these days wascomposed of political flyers, the other half divided between bills and belatednotes of sympathy. He was about to hang up when a woman's voice said, "Ed?Is that you?"

No one he knew called him Ed, or Eddie. Sometimes atelemarketer made a stab at sudden intimacy that way, but he was not a man whoinvited the casual use of nicknames. Even Bee, who knew him as well as anyone,and loved him, had always called him Edward. Her two grown children still kepttheir childhood names for him-Nick addressing him as "Schuyler" or"Professor," and Julie as "Poppy." Nick's bride, Amanda,said "Dad," a little self-consciously, while reserving the title"Daddy," as Julie did, for her own father.

"This is Edward, yes," he said into the phone."Who is this?" and the woman said, "You don't know me, Ed, butwe have a good friend in common."

He didn't say anything and she continued. "My nameis Dorothy Clark, Dodie to you. Joy Feldman and I went to schooltogether."

Edward tried to imagine sweet, matronly Joy as aschoolgirl, but all he could think of was the Tuna Surprise casserole she'dslid into his freezer right after the funeral, and that days later he'd found asingle hair at its defrosted center. Bee might have said, Ah, the surprise! Hehad a chilly premonition that this woman was going to try to sell him somethingdeath-related, like perpetual grave care, or hit him up for a contribution tosome obscure charity in Bee's memory.

But her voice seemed to deepen a little with emotion asshe said, in response to his silence, "You and I are in the same boat, Ed.I mean I'm recently widowed, too, and Joy thought . . . well,that we should probably get to know each other."

He wondered why Joy would have ever thought that, andthen he understood, with a little shock of revulsion and amusement, not unlikethe way he'd felt when he discovered the hair in the casserole. "Isee," Edward said. "That was kind of her, but I'm afraid she wasmistaken. I'm not really looking for . . . for any new friends at themoment." At the bird feeder tray right outside the window, a fewchickadees settled and pecked.

"Oh, of course," Dorothy Clark said in abrighter tone. "Everyone has their own timetable for grieving. But whenyou're ready, why don't you give me a ring. I live in Tenafly, we'repractically neighbors. I'll give you my number." There was a flurry at thebird feeder as a jay arrived, scattering seed and the chickadees.

"All right," Edward said resignedly, politely.He was polite to telemarketers, too, even those who took liberties with hisname.

She was suspicious, though. "Do you have apencil?" she asked. If he had a pencil, he might have noted the chickadeesand the jay in his neglected birding journal, or tapped on the window with itto interrupt the bullying. But he said, "Sure, go ahead," and sherecited the number slowly, twice. At least she didn't ask him to read it backto her.

He returned to the living room, but the glide of the ironover the worn blue field of his shirt was no longer soothing. His lonelinesshad been disturbed, and he wanted it back.

One evening near the end, he was reading at Bee'sbedside, his free hand resting lightly on her arm; she seemed to be asleep.Then she opened her glazed eyes and said, "Look at you. They'll becrawling out of the woodwork."

"What will, sweetheart?" he'd asked, but sheshut her eyes and didn't answer.

She had said many strange things during those last nightsand days. "Oh, what will I do without you?" she'd cried out once, asif he were the one dying and leaving her behind. And there were drug-inducedhallucinations, of small children standing at the foot of her bed, and micescrambling in the bathtub. Maybe there were more vermin waiting in the woodworkof her fevered dream.

It wasn't until the second phone call, a few days afterthe one from Dorothy Clark, that he finally got Bee's meaning. This time thecaller introduced herself as Madge Miller, a vaguely familiar name. She and Beehad been in the same book club a while back and she'd heard the sad newsthrough a grapevine of mutual friends. She was just calling to commiserate, shesaid-what a terrible shame, what a beautiful, bright woman in the prime of herlife. And maybe he'd like some company soon, for lunch or a drink.

Later that afternoon, Edward went into the kitchen andrummaged in what one of the children, in childhood, had aptly dubbed "thecrazy drawer." Among the loose batteries and spare shoelaces, the expiredsupermarket coupons and the keys that didn't open any known doors, he found thechain that had briefly kept Bee's reading glasses conveniently dangling fromher neck, until she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and declared thatshe'd rather go blind.

Now Edward untangled the chain and attached it to hisglasses, carefully avoiding his reflection, which he imagined bore anunfortunate resemblance to his third-grade teacher, Miss

Du Pont. His own students would have a field day. Buthe'd only use the chain at home, where he often mislaid his glasses, and atleast he'd be prepared to screen any future phone calls from strangers.

2

Bachelor Days

For a very long time, following a disastrous affair,Edward believed he would never marry. He had gone out with many women, but likehis father he'd fallen in love-in what promised to be a fatal and final way-withonly one of them. Her name was Laurel Ann Arquette, and she'd taught Frenchjust down the hall from his lab at Fenton Day, a private school on the UpperWest Side of Manhattan. Another teacher had introduced them at lunch onLaurel's first day.

He stood and said, "Hello, and welcome to perdition."The spoon he'd been stirring his coffee with clanged to the floor, making herlaugh, a bell that chimed from the top of his head to the pit of his belly. Herabundant hair was prematurely white, silver really, and her face was actually heart-shaped.She was as slender as a schoolgirl, for whom she might be mistaken, if not forthat hair and her knowing presence. "Edward," she said in return, asif she were naming or anointing him, and she let her hand be swallowed by his.

It was 1974. They were both in their mid-twenties thenand each school day became an agony of hours until they could meet at hisapartment in Hell's Kitchen and make raw and exhausting love. They were veryprudent at Fenton, though, sitting discreetly apart in the faculty room, nevereven accidentally touching in the corridors, and resisting the temptation toexchange loaded glances.

But everyone, from the overstimulated students to theamused lunch ladies, knew anyway, somehow. One morning, he confiscated a notebetween two seventh-graders in his homeroom: "Does Dr. S. couche avecMademoiselle A.?" Oui! Yes, he did, every chance he could, and he might aswell have worn a sandwich board advertising his ardor. Even ripping up thatsilly note and frowning severely at the giggling transgressors didn't quelltheir excitement.

But once Edward and Laurel announced their engagement,right after their second spring break together, they became as boring to thestudents as their own parents, and somewhat less interesting to everyone else.Still, the engaged couple were consumed by their new status, and began to makewedding plans. He'd hoped for something simple, but Laurel wanted the wholeshow, in an almost unconscious act of defiance against her divorced parents,who had eloped to Maryland with Laurel already on board.

Edward thought she was conflating the lavishness of areception with the success of a marriage, but he went along with her. She'dbeen such a miserable child, passed back and forth between her depressed motherand angry father like a hand grenade that might suddenly go off. Once, she toldEdward, her parents had an argument that threatened to become physical, andLaurel, stepping between them, was accidentally knocked to the ground. Sheclaimed her hair had turned white as a result of all that early tension."You can't imagine," she said, and he couldn't.

His own parents had stuck it out, their early passionhaving metamorphosed into something lower-key but lasting, a soufflé collapsedinto a comforting soup of days. They were as dazzled as Edward was by Laurel,and would have remortgaged their house in Elmont to buy her happiness, andthereby their son's. As it turned out, they only had to dig into theirretirement fund to come up with the lion's share of the wedding expenses.

Edward swore that he would pay them back someday. Therewas nothing offered from the bride's side; money, squandered and lost, was oneof the many contentions between the still-contentious elder Arquettes. Laurelhad been estranged from both of them, and only after Edward urged her did shesend them invitations.

Edward didn't want a church service-he wavered betweenatheism and agnosticism, between science and the unknown. But Laurel, anonbeliever herself, insisted that they had to hedge their bets. When thearrangements began to get out of hand, they quarreled. "You don't carewhat I want," she accused him, unfairly, in the sweetly suffocating,refrigerated breath of the florist's shop.

She wanted a couturier gown and fountains of Cristal. Shewanted to have tiny, speckled yellow orchids that might have been plucked fromsome mossy jungle placed at every table in the Rainbow Room, and there were toomany tables. How could she complain about feelings of isolation and still listmore than 150 friends who had to be invited? He'd only met a few of them.

He came back at her with, "You don't even know whatyou really want." But he gave in, finally, to everything, perverselypleased that she seemed more outraged than hurt by his resistance. She'd beenhurt enough in her life. He wanted to protect and defend her, even before theirofficial vows, to make up for her stolen happiness. And although he knew better-biologywas his subject, after all-the heat between them seemed as if it might neverdie.

A week before the wedding, they lay in their usual post-sexualstupor. Edward was still marveling at her body, the bold and innovative waysshe used it, the way she looked-those small breasts, as tender as if they'donly recently budded; the springy, surprisingly dark hair of her bush. Wordsfrom Human Anatomy 101 struck him with new poignancy. Scapular. Clavicle. Sheextricated herself, turning away from him, and, instead of her usual, throatilywhispered "Je t'aime," or "Again, please," she said,"I almost got married once before, you know."

He hadn't known; she'd never mentioned it. His heart wasjust slowing, and he hoped she couldn't feel the way it began to leap againstthe curve of her spine. "To David?" he asked, as casually as hecould. David had been her previous boyfriend. She and Edward, after they'ddeclared their love for each other, had exchanged romantic histories-it was aritual of intimacy that was painful but necessary; Laurel said so. And everyonein her past, as in his, seemed ephemeral, anyway, like people encountered in adream.

"No," she said, her voice slightly muffled byher pillow. "It was Joe."

"Joe? Who's Joe?" Edward said.

"This guy, Joe Ettlinger. Before I was withDavid."

"Are you making this up?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I should have toldyou."

"Yes," he agreed. "You should have."

"I'm sorry," she said again, less distinctly.

"What happened?" he asked.

"We fell out."

"Over what?" Edward said, imagining rareorchids and sparkling Cristal at the heart of the story.

"This and that, I don't really remember. We justfell out of love."

He couldn't picture that kind of falling, a plunge out oflove, like a film about diving played in reverse. "For good?" hesaid.

"Yes, of course," she answered, after a lengthypause. "I'm almost asleep," she said then. "Let's stop talkingnow, okay?"

Despite that cautionary conversation, he was still takenby surprise when she didn't show up at the church the following Saturday. Hewaited for her in the vestry for what seemed like years, but was actually lessthan two hours. Mysteriously, she had decided to spend the previous night inher mother's apartment, which Edward had taken as a good omen. Peace on earth,goodwill toward everyone!

And there were her mother and his sitting in front rowson opposite sides of the satin-swathed aisle, the two of them looking sisterlyin their elaborate hats, their long gloves and trembling corsages. But Mrs.Arquette said, when asked about it later, that she hadn't seen or spoken toLaurel in weeks.

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