Edward Schuyler is now in his mid-sixties, but as a younger man he had his share of love's highs and lows. His first love, the beautiful Laurel, left him stranded at the altar. Years later he met Bee and her two children. He fell madly in love, and his family was complete. But after 20 years, Bee got sick and died. Once the shock clears, Edward is stunned to realize what a "catch" he is. When his grown stepchildren place a personal ad for him in the New York Review of Books, the women respond in droves. Edward is forced into the dating world, and the results are heartbreaking, maddening, comical, and poignant. Love and sex for this older generation is a hot topic (no pun intended), and Wolitzer (Summer Reading; The Doctor's Daughter) tells the tale well. She is surprisingly good at portraying a man's perspective. Although her writing is not as crisp as in some of her previous novels, this is a breezier tale with a lighter edge. VERDICT 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 marketing; see Prepub Alert, 7/5/11.]-Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Wolitzer (Summer Reading) looks at life after death; the life, that is, of a youngish widower after the death of his much loved wife. 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. Her main character, science teacher Edward Schuyler, is likable and believable, both in his grief and his confusion when interested women start coming out of the woodwork. When one turns out to be from his past, things take a slightly melodramatic turn, and though never escalating to a level of serious danger, the threat is there. Or perhaps the threat of a threat; it feels as if Wolitzer wants to heighten and defuse at the same time. Of course "domestic" doesn't mean safe, and we're supposed to share in Edward's unease and in his hope that all will be well, but the effect is more irritating than suspenseful. When tension is packed off in a few pages in favor of a happy ending for all, it's both a relief-we've gotten fond of Edward and want the best for him-and a disappointment, because of how contrived it feels. (Jan. 24) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* At 62, Edward Schuyler is to his dismay an available man. Burned in his 20s when he was left standing at the altar by his tempestous lover, Laurel, he finds true happiness nearly 15 years later with divorcee Bee and her son and daughter. When Bee dies, too young, of pancreatic cancer, a still-grieving Edward is urged back into social life by his loving stepdaughter and stepdaughter-in-law, who take out a personal ad for him in the New York Review of Books. Dating after death isn't easy, notes a widow who responds to the ad, but most of the 46 responses go in the trash. Tamping down feelings of disloyalty to Bee, Edward does start dating again, with varying degrees of success, and one persistent ad respondent shocks him before he is able to feel again. Wolitzer has written before of the pain of losing a partner and its aftermath (notably in her first novel, Ending, 1974), and she does it with remarkable insight, grace, and humor, as when commenting that the recent dead are such a social menace when Edward attends a dinner party after Bee's death. A warm, keenly incisive view of life's vicissitudes by a writer too seldom heard from.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2010 Booklist

Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In Hilma Wolitzer's novel, a widower struggles with grief and dating. IN the opening lines of Hilma Wolitzer's wonderful new novel, the recently widowed Edward Schuyler stands in his living room, ironing, when the telephone rings. He picks it up to hear the clamorous, intrusive voice of a female suitor, attempting to break in on his grief. But he'd rather iron the blouses of his deceased wife, Bee, "as a way of reconnecting with her when she was so irrevocably gone" than date any of the women now scurrying in his direction. Bee, on her deathbed, had predicted this fate: "Look at you. They'll be crawling out of the woodwork." And so they do, but who can blame them? Edward is a catch - or will be, once he's returned from the Underworld. A 62-year-old teacher, he's a "Science Guy. Erudite and kind, balding but handsome," according to the personal ad placed, unbeknown to him, by his stepdaughter and stepdaughter-in-law in The New York Review of Books. Despite his horror at this gesture, he cares for Bee's children, and for the other survivors she has bequeathed him: a failing 15-year-old dog and an ancient mother-in-law who calls herself "the wreck of the Hesperus" but hasn't lost a marble yet - indeed, wishes she could forget, "just a little," to mitigate her own grief. As dark as this material might sound, it isn't. Wolitzer's vision of the world, for all its sorrow, is often hilarious and always compassionate. Her novels are social comedies: they may feature jiltings, separations and bereavement, but they tend to have happy endings. Rooted in Manhattan and its suburbs, her characters share many cultural references with her readers. We know, as Edward does, that the Saturday crossword puzzle in The New York Times can be "daunting." And we understand Edward and Bee's ironic humor. When, before learning she has cancer, they discuss how many of their friends have recently died, "Bee said, 'Our circle is getting smaller and smaller. Soon we'll only be a semicircle.' 'And then a comma,' Edward added. They smiled at each other, in a guilty rush of gaiety." One of the few characters to lack a sense of humor is the villain of "An Available Man," a flamboyant figure from Edward's past who erupts into his present. Her reappearance is astonishing, but consistent with her character and with the overall weave of the book, in which Wolitzer braids past and present together - so that Edward's first date as a widower glimmers with memories of his first date ever, half a century before. And Bee, though absent, continues to accompany him, remaining just as present a player as the living. Yet this interweaving is also what finally heals Edward, rendering him whole again, like one of the old tapestries he watches being repaired in the textile conservation lab at the Met. There, in the basement of the great museum, our 21st-century New Yorker, whose world brims with mythologies (Central Park reveals itself as Oz and one of his pursuers incarnates Germanic legend, her seductive siren song echoing across MoMA's mobbed lobby), will find his Penelope. And when at last he recognizes her, we realize that he is Odysseus, wandering the world on his way home. Unlike his Greek forerunner, however, he's the one who's been besieged by suitors, while with "long patience," his true second love sits calmly waiting, before her loom, as he makes his lucky way toward her. Nancy Kline's most recent book is a new René Char collection, "Furor and Mystery and Other Writings," translated and edited with Mary Ann Caws.