(E-Reader) "How to Talk to a Widower" - Jonathan Tropper

Having read John Green's "Looking for Alaska", which was recommended by my daughter, and finding I really liked it, I tried "How to Talk to a Widower", because, having read on the e-reader, I thought was the same author.
"Looking for Alaska" is the story of a small group of high school students at a private institution.  "Alaska" is one of the students.  The story is first person through one of the characters. ~ Spoiler ~ the key issue in the book is that the character Alaska gets drunk and runs off in her car and gets into a fatal accident.  The remaining characters are left with guilt (as they assisted in the drinking, and created a diversion so Alaska could leave the school), and are left wondering if Alaska died in an accident or a suicide.

"How to Talk to a Widower" is similar, in that it explores a tragedy from an "inside" perspective.  The main character is recovering from his wife's death (a plane crash that occurred about a year before the book starts).  His wife had a previous marriage, so there is a teenage boy who is now in the care of the previously absent birth father.

The main character writes articles for a  magazine called "How to Talk to a Widower" where he takes readers along on his recovery/depression, and provides personal advice on what is going through his mind and how he reacts to the actions of those interacting with him in his new circumstances (e.g. the married men take the opportunity to bring him to strip clubs, as a humanitarian gesture that they reluctantly have to attend; the women in the circle provide food).

The book is based at the post-death, 1 year mark, where the main character is being encouraged to date again.  Tropper does a good job of exploring the lingering depression and the guilt about moving on with life and the associated feelings of abandoning the now-ex-wife.

All in all, a very good read and very good characters - you are really interested in how things turn out.  I believe Tropper does a good job of getting 'inside" the situation, without devolving the story into psychoanalysis or an exercise in understanding depression.

Because I liked "How to Talk to a Widower", I subsequently read "This is Where I Leave You" and "One Last Thing Before I Go", both of which I liked as well.  Both have the same semi-autobiographical tone, and depth of understanding of the characters that they are good reads, easy to pick up and hard to put down.  The same "advantage/criticism" exists - Tropper doesn't wrap up complex problems in a nice simple solution - there is resolution to the immediate story, but the larger scale issues are left unresolved, as they are in real life.  The widower doesn't get married at the end, the surgery patient doesn't get the miracle cure (or die), the divorcee ends up in the weird "hate but maybe re-start" situation that is reality - a story where a replacement was found that made everything lovely, or a secret that makes everything good in perspective is not found.