Hachette Livre

Hachette Livre Reading Group Guides

Welcome to our Reading Group guide for How To Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper. We invite you to consider and discuss the following questions when reading this book:

  1. Is Doug’s view of his marriage to Hailey a realistic one? Why did his mother not approve of the marriage?
  2. Doug’s grief is very much on display. Is this self-indulgent on Doug’s part? How does stepson Russ respond to the loss of his mother?
  3. ‘I had a wife, I say to myself, over and over again. Her name was Hailey. Now she’s gone. And so am I. But we’re not going to talk about that right now, because to talk about it I’ll have to think about it, and I’ve thought it to death over the last year.’ Discuss the relationship between Doug and the reader.
  4. How reliable is Doug as a narrator? He often doesn’t behave particularly well; how does his relationship with the other characters, in particular Russ, affect how we view Doug? Does Russ challenge Doug’s ‘right’ to be irresponsible?
  5. What is the reader to make of Doug’s treatment of Laney? Does he get his just desserts?
  6. How are notions of different sorts of memory explored? And various kinds of bereavement?
  7. ‘“You’re lashing out, trying to hold the world accountable.”’ Is this fair comment on Doug’s behaviour? How does Doug start to rejoin the ordinary world?
  8. How has Doug’s relationship with his own father influenced his relationship with Russ?
  9. Is twin sister Claire jealous of Doug? And what does Debbie feel about her older siblings?
  10. Does How to Talk to a Widower read as an explicitly American novel? Could the characters and the story easily be transposed to the UK?
  11. How realistic is the characterisation? Is the same depth of characterisation accorded to both sexes?
  12. Does the author portray family relationships in a negative or positive way? Is there a sense of redemption to Doug’s emotional journey?
  13. Is there any kind of symbolism in the rabbits and the rabbit imagery? Why is Doug so aggressive towards them?
  14. A lot of this story focuses on death, grief and difficult relationships; is How to Talk to a Widower a gloomy book to read? Does if feel like a comic novel? Or is it a romantic novel? Would men enjoy reading it as much as women?
  15. Is it unusual for an author to focus so single-mindedly on grief? Might the perspective on grief differ if the sexes of the two main characters were switched, so that the story featured instead a young wife coping with the loss of her older husband?
  16. ‘I looked up at him last night and told him that I was ready, but now, with Russ’s low, steady breath in my ear, I realize that I was wrong. I am nowhere near ready to die. I’ve died enough. I still have some living to do. I’ve just got to start doing it a little more carefully.’ Would Doug feel this way if he hadn’t been physically shot?
  17. Should the reader infer from Doug’s tentative move latterly towards Brooke that this novel has a happy ending? And how does the author show that Doug’s relationships with his own family have improved?

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