Product Description

The brilliantly funny and heartwarming New York Times bestseller about a young woman who stumbles, then fights to build a new life after the death of her husband. 36-year-old Sophie Stanton loses her young husband to cancer. In an age where women are expected to be high-achievers, Sophie desperately wants to be a good widow?a graceful, composed Jackie Kennedy kind of widow. Alas, Sophie is more of a Jack Daniels kind. Downing cartons of ice-cream for breakfast, breaking down in the produce section of supermarkets, showing up to work in her bathrobe and bunny slippers?soon she?s not only lost her husband, but her job and her waistline as well. In a desperate attempt to reinvent her life, Sophie moves to Ashland, Oregon. But instead of the way it?s depicted in the movies, with a rugged Sam Shepherd kind of guy finding her, Sophie finds herself in the middle of Lucy-and-Ethel madcap adventures with a darkly comic edge. Still, Sophie proves that with enough humor and chutzpah, it is possible to have life after loss.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #646018 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 464 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780446619066
• BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
• Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Amazon.com Review
Some widows face their loss with denial. Sophie Stanton's reaction is one of pure bafflement. "How can I be a widow?" Sophie asks at the opening of Lolly Winston's sweet debut novel, Good Grief. "I'm only thirty-six. I just got used to the idea of being married." Sophie's young widowhood forces her to do all kinds of crazy things--drive her car through her garage door, for instance. That's on one of the rare occasions when she bothers to get out of bed. The Christmas season especially terrifies her: "I must write a memo to the Minister of Happier Days requesting that the holidays be cancelled this year." But widowhood also forces her to do something very sane. After the death of her computer programmer husband, she reexamines her life as a public relations agent in money-obsessed Silicon Valley. Sophie decides to ease her grief, or at least her loneliness, by moving in with her best friend Ruth in Ashland, Oregon. But it's her difficult relationship with psycho teen punker Crystal, to whom she becomes a Big Sister, that mysteriously brings her at least a few steps out of her grief. Winston allows Sophie life after widowhood: The novel almost indiscernibly turns into a gentle romantic comedy and a quirky portrait of life in an artsy small town. At all stops on her journey from widow to survivor, Sophie is a lively, crabby, delightfully imperfect character. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly
"The grief is up already. It is an early riser, waiting with its gummy arms wrapped around my neck, its hot, sour breath in my ear." Sophie Stanton feels far too young to be a widow, but after just three years of marriage, her wonderful husband, Ethan, succumbs to cancer. With the world rolling on, unaware of her pain, Sophie does the only sensible thing: she locks herself in her house and lives on what she can buy at the convenience store in furtive midnight shopping sprees. Everything hurts—the telemarketers asking to speak to Ethan, mail with his name on it, his shirts, which still smell like him. At first Sophie is a "good" widow, gracious and melancholy, but after she drives her car through the garage door, something snaps; she starts showing up at work in her bathrobe and hiding under displays in stores. Her boss suggests she take a break, so she sells her house and moves to Ashland, Ore., to live with her best friend, Ruth, and start over. Grief comes along, too—but with a troubled, pyromaniac teen assigned to her by a volunteer agency, a charming actor dogging her and a new job prepping desserts at a local restaurant, Sophie is forced to explore the misery that has consumed her. Throughout this heartbreaking, gorgeous look at loss, Winston imbues her heroine and her narrative with the kind of grace, bitter humor and rapier-sharp realness that will dig deep into a reader's heart and refuse to let go. Sophie is wounded terribly, but she's also funny, fresh and utterly believable. There's nary a moment of triteness in this outstanding debut.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Sophie Stanton goes from newlywed to widow in just three short years of marriage, her competent and confident persona replaced by an Oreo-munching, robe-and-slipper-clad zombie. Overwhelmed by grief and despair, out of a job, home, and clothes that fit, Sophie leaves her high-pressure, memory-laden Silicon Valley lifestyle for a laid-back Oregon village. In her metamorphosis from bereft widow to beguiling woman, Sophie is aided by an unlikely ally: Crystal, a street-smart but emotionally damaged teenager she befriends as part of a "Big Sisters" program. If there are stages to the mourning process, Winston gets them all down perfectly, communicating Sophie's misery with a poignant empathy. Those who have experienced such loss will surely recognize themselves in some part of Sophie's transformative journey; those who haven't will hope to demonstrate as much grit, wit, and charm as Winston's lovable heroine. Tackling a difficult subject in a debut novel is a gutsy move, and Winston pulls it off with just the right blend of heartfelt humor and heartwarming humanity. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Perfectly baked!
Good Grief belongs to a sub-sub-genre of women's fiction. Likeable woman faces crisis. Discovers herself through transforming domestic, warm-and-fuzzy talents into a commercial enterprise. And, if single, she gets a romantic interest as a bonus.

As it happens, I rather like this sub-sub genre. And Lolly Winston gives us a heroine who's likeable and intelligent. She adds an edge by giving us a blow-by-blow account of a year in the life of a grieving widow. In this case, the grief seems especially painful because Sophie, the heroine, is young, and because she lost her own mother at a very young age.

Sophie's grief seems like a blanket someone has thrown over her life, stifling her energy. Like most employers, Sophie's company allots a limited time for grieving. After that, Sophie is supposed to be a cheerful PR person, extolling the virtues of some deeply flawed medical product.

Just as she hits bottom in her career, an old friend invites Sophie to move from California's Silicon Valley to Ashland, Oregon. And Sophie's new life begins.

Sophie finds a charming rental cottage and a job in a restaurant, where she gets downgraded from waitress to salad prep and then to pastry, where she finds her true niche. She begins to study baking in earnest and, along the way, finds a new love and a new career.

Of course, it's not quite that easy. Sophie becomes a Big Sister (the reasons are a little value and I'm surprised she was accepted, given her grief-stricken state). Her Little Sister, Crystal, isn't the cuddly eight-year-old she expected, but a tough-talking teen with a ditzy mom and potentially serious problems. Some of Sophie's descents into grief can be hard to read, despite a comedic element. Sophie's opening party pushes the envelope when anything that can go wrong does go wrong.

In the end Sophie emerges as a strong heroine, although some elements of the happy ending owe more to luck than to Sophie's efforts. As a career coach, I wish these authors wouldn't make starting a business seem so effortless. But I have to say that most career transformations happen just this way: putting one foot in front of the other, remaining open to new options, and being willing to follow your passion to see where it leads.

Something new. Chick lit/romance based on grieving
What an unusual premise for a sweet little romance to take off from: our heroine is in her thirties, recently widowed after only a few years of marriage. It's difficult to make profound grief funny, but Lolly Winston manages it in spades. There's an especially funny scene in which Winston keeps the point of view and voice and tone that of Sophie, her grieving narrator, while she's coming completely unglued (showing up for work in her bathrobe and slippers, scarfing down carbs and sweets - hot dog buns with honey! - and talking in gibberish). In writerly terms, this is called Your Basic Crazy Unreliable Narrator, but Winston holds it together just long enough for the poor woman to be packed off to a shrink.
Somewhere between quitting her job and being fired, she takes a leave of absence in the interest of mental health, treks off to pretty Ashland, Oregon, and begins, improbably, to try patching herself together by becoming a volunteer Big Sister to a very angry pyromaniac teenage girl - not the most sensible choice, but what the hay: it's a romance novel, after all.
And, right on cue, in comes Mr. Wonderful.
Happy ending, eventually, of course. Lots of improbable stuff along the way, but this book is so well written and handles the vagaries of grief so well that you've gotta love it.

A Laugh out Loud Emotional Tearjerker
"Good Grief" is a wonderful book about the sad topics of loss and grief. Sophie Stanton has lost her husband Ethan to Hodgkin's disease after three short years of marriage. She isn't prepared to be a widow at such a young age and is not sure how she is supposed to act or what she is supposed to do, so she stays in the house, rarely gets out
of bed, and shops at the 24 hour market in the middle of the night. She loses her job and decides to sell the house and move up to Oregon to live with her good friend Ruth.

Sophie's hopes by moving to Oregon that she'll be able to escape - no more phone calls for Ethan, no more junk mail with his name on it, no more mother-in-law around all the time. What she isn't expecting is how hard it is to start over. She hasn't dated in awhile and her new job as a waitress is proving to be more difficult than she'd thought.

"Good Grief" had me laughing out loud several times and also made me shed some tears. From the very beginning of the book, it was so easy to relate to Sophie. She's a real character who loses some of her sanity under tragic circumstances and then fights to get it back. All in
all, this is a great book that I would highly recommend to anyone looking for a well written, emotional yet funny story.