Publisher's Weekly Review
This talky, intimate look at grief and lost relationships begins with the death of Laura Wells, a music teacher in a small upstate New York town. Geoffrey Tremont, her old college friend, is enlisted to execute her will, despite not having seen her in decades. When he travels to her hometown, he meets her best friend, Marian Ballantine, who is still consumed with grief over the loss of her husband 10 years before. They're immediately attracted to each other, but as each is involved with someone else, they have to decide what they're willing to sacrifice-and how vulnerable they can be-in order to get together. In Saul's latest novel (after Light of Day), characters negotiate the processes of loving, grieving, and healing in different ways, but they do so often in long conversations overburdened with psychoanalysis, making for difficult going at times. Still, there's much to make this novel compelling. Agent: Joy Harris. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
In Saul's second novel (Light of Day, 2005), a 40-ish man faces the lack of passion in his life when he becomes the executor of a college friend's estate. Geoffrey lives in Manhattan where he earns a living doing voice-overs and carries on a no-strings relationship with his girlfriend. One day he gets a call from a lawyer; his old friend Laura has died and he's been named executor of her small estate. When Geoffrey knew Laura, he was at Columbia and she was at Juilliard. She moved to Paris with her husband, fellow jazz musician Steve, but when he died nine years ago, she moved back to her upstate New York hometown and taught music. Geoffrey drives up there and soon meets her best friend Marian, who also happens to be a widow. Narrator Geoffrey announces on the second page that he has fallen in love with Marian at first sight. The only problem is that Marian has a boyfriend she doesn't even pretend she loves. Eliot runs the local hardware store and doesn't like to discuss feelings (readers will sympathize after hundreds of pages of Geoffrey's navel gazing). Marian uses their relationship to avoid feeling the kind of passion she had with her husband Buddy. Instead, since Buddy's death, she has been clinging to his memory and her grief. She and Laura bonded as "the young widows." It is less clear why Geoffrey has avoided emotional commitment, although he and his gay psychiatrist brother Alex certainly discuss their avoidance enough--at least until Alex meets and falls immediately in love with Laura's wayward brother Simon, whom Laura and Geoffrey conspired to keep from attending her wedding long ago. By then Geoffrey and Marian are talking nonstop about their emotions. For a guy who claims to be out of touch with his capacity for feelings, Geoffrey is the most touchy-feeling fictional hero since Oliver Barrett IV, the main character in Erich Segal's bestseller Love Story. This talky love story will turn the most romantic reader into a curmudgeon.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Saul weaves a tale of loss and love in this story of New Yorker Geoffrey Tremont, whose sophisticated and urbane life is unexpectedly altered when he receives a letter naming him as executor of the estate of his college friend Laura Wells, after her early death from cancer. Although Geoffrey has not talked with Laura in nearly two decades, he honors the wishes of his old friend and travels to Laura's hometown of Shady Grove. Upon his arrival, Geoffrey meets Laura's friend Marian Ballantine and is immediately drawn to this reserved young widow. A profound tragedy has caused Marian to retreat into a safe but passionless life. Geoffrey's sudden appearance and Laura's early death causes Marian to reconsider whether it is possible to love again after so great a loss. The pacing of the novel is slow, and at times Geoffrey's continued ruminations about love can become tedious. Still, fans of gentle reads will enjoy the strong focus on relationships and the slow build between Marian and Geoffrey.--Gaus, Eve Copyright 2010 Booklist