An Available Man, Hilma Wolitzer
An Available Man, Hilma Wolitzer
List: $21.95 | Sale: $15.37
Club: $10.97

An Available Man
A Novel

Author: Hilma Wolitzer

Narrator: Fred Sullivan

Unabridged: 7 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/14/2012


Synopsis

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.

About Hilma Wolitzer

Hilma Wolitzer is the author of several novels, including Hearts, Ending, and Tunnel of Love. She is the 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 at the University of Iowa, New York University, and Columbia University. She lives in New York City.

About Fred Sullivan

Fred Sullivan is an actor and an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. He has played over one hundred roles as an award-winning resident actor at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island. He is resident director at Gamm Theatre and teaches acting at the Rhode Island School of Design.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Betsy on February 06, 2022

I was introduced to Hilma Wolitzer's work through her new anthology of short stories Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket and chose to read An Available Man because it was her next most recent book (2012). I really enjoyed it, but it makes me even more eager to see her next book, now that W......more

Goodreads review by Emily on December 27, 2011

This charming and deeply emotional book features Edward Schuyler, a recently widowed science teacher who embarks on the dubious task of what one possible suitor calls "dating after death." It is also a book about grief, betrayal, family, and tapestries. I think tapestries are actually a very good me......more


Quotes

“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 to give up on the search for love.” Julia Glass, National Book Award winner

“A warm, keenly incisive view of life’s vicissitudes by a writer too seldom heard from.” Booklist (starred review)

“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

“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