The Beginner's Goodbye (2012) (edit title/settings)

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Aaron Woolcott: Husband of Dorothy, brother to Nandina, editor of private publishing firm in Baltimore, MD. Aaron copes with his disability and tries to cope with all that life brings including the gentle hauntings by his wife.
• Dr. Dorothy Rosales: Aaron's wife; a doctor, unexpectedly gone after an accident.
• Nandina: Aaron's sister, a strong woman who cares for her brother.
• Gil Bryan: Aaron's contractor a key player who falls in love with his sister.
• Peggy: A secretary in Aaron's office, supportive and compassionate.
• Irene Lance: works in Aaron's office
• Charles: works in Aaron's office
• Danika Jones: Add a description of this character.
• Aunt Selma
• Luke
• Dr. Byron Worth
• Tyrone Rosales
• Mimi King: Aaron's next door neighbor
• Brenna
• Mr. Hogan
• Louise
• Jim Rust
• Ann-Marie
• Nate Weiss
• Mary-Clyde
• Robby
• Betsy Hardy
• Roger
• Maeve: Aaron's daughter who brings joy and love to his life.
• Gary
• Bo Brooks
• Anne Tyler

Quotes edit see section history

• “The solitude made me feel too tall.”

  Aaron

• “I placed the sprinkler near the azaleas and turned the faucet on full-blast and sat back down. And that was how I discovered the pleasures of watching a lawn being watered. ¶ I swear that I could feel the grass's gratitude. The birds seemed grateful, too. A little crowd of them came out of nowhere, as if word had gotten around somehow, and they twittered and chirped and fluttered in the droplets. My chair was too right-angled, forcing me to sit unnaturally erect, and its scrolls and curlicues dug into the knobs of my spine, but even so I felt the most pervasive sense of peace. I tilted my face up and squinted against the sunlight to follow the arc of the spray, which sashayed left, sashayed right, like a young girl swishing her skirts as she walked. ¶ I practically drowned that yard.”

  Aaron

• “Something hung on in the atmosphere, though -- something more than the scent of their cigarette smoke. I felt I'd interrupted a conversation about richer, fuller lives than mine, and when I drifted through the bare rooms it wasn't only to reclaim my house; it was also, just a little bit, in the hope that some of that richness might have been left behind for me.”

  Aaron

• “What I do remember is that familiar, weary, helpless feeling, the feeling that we were confined in some kind of rodent cage, wrestling together doggedly, neither one of us ever winning.”

• “I stared at her. I felt as if heavy furniture were being moved around in my head.”

• “"Here goes," I say, and Maeve says, "Whee!" I don't know where she learned that. It's a word I associate with comic strips, and she enunicates it just that precisely, so that I can almost see it printed inside a balloon above her head.”

• “Maeve is about to zip on by when the man says, "Why, hello there," and she pauses and raises her face to him and flutters her eyelashes, beaming. I've never figured out how she decides which people she'll cotton to.”

• “"I've decided," he said, "that they don't visit. But I think if you know them well enough, if you'd listened to them closely enough while they were still alive, you might be able to imagine what they would tell you even now. So the smart thing to do is, pay attention while they're living. But that's only my opinion."”

• “Maybe they were just thinking, Of course. We go around and around in this world, and here we go again.”

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Selma

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Anne Tyler (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: Fiction

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary