Epilogue: A Memoir [Paperback]

From Anne Roiphe, the critically acclaimed author ofFruitful,comes theNew York TimesbestsellingEpilogue,a beautiful memoir about death, life, and widowhood. Roiphe explores what happened when, at age 70, she lost her husband of 40 years. Moving between heartbreaking memories of her marriage and the pressing needs of a new day-to-day routine,Epiloguetakes readers on her journey into the unknown world of life after love.

Widowed novelist, near seventy, ex-Park Avenue girl, ex-beatnik, ex-many other things too complicated to list here, loves big parties, summers at the beach, grandchildren, seeks interesting man for dinner and a movie.

Anne Roiphe was not quite seventy years old when her husband of nearly forty years unexpectedly passed away. But it was not until her daughters placed a personal ad in a literary journal that Roiphe began to consider the previously unimagined possibility of a new man. Moving between heartbreaking memories of her marriage and the pressing needs of a new day-to-day routine,Epiloguetakes us on her journey into the unknown world of life after love.

Roiphe decides to reenter the dating world. But between new lunches, coffee dates, and e-mail exchanges, she wrestles with an unsettling loneliness. Recollections of marriage evoke complex, unexpected emotions on her journey through grief toward new companionship. In beautifully wrought vignettes, she recalls hailing a cab for the first time and learning to lock and unlock the front door—tasks her husband had always done.

Eloquent and astute,Epiloguetells the story of love rekindled and life remade. Roiphe offers us an elegant literary pastiche not of grief, but of hope and renewal.

[A] raw, painful, and yet occasionally comic memoir. . . . [Roiphe] isnt reticent about taking off the bandages and showing us the extent and depth of her injuries. . . . The moving, imml“Ò