THE WIDOWER’S NOTEBOOK - A Memoir
Available from Penguin Random House Books
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Written with unexpected humor and great warmth, The Widower’s Notebook, is a portrait of a marriage, an account of the complexities of finding oneself single again after losing your spouse, and a story of enduring love.
“Deeply moving . . . beautifully written . . . It is such an achievement, like running uphill against a strong wind.”
—Joyce Carol Oates
“The Widower’s Notebook is a searing rendition of the complex relationship between men and grief—an intense despair that is too often starved for words. This chronicle of devastation is itself devastating, a deeply powerful and unflinchingly honest report of how painfully and strangely life continues in the wake of a sudden, tragic death.”
—Andrew Solomon, bestselling author of Far From the Tree
“…a quiet stunner of a memoir… the book never loses momentum, thanks in large part to his vivid writing… This is a tender, moving, and resonant account of how life continues whether one wants it to or not.”
–Publisher’s Weekly Best Books
“His words carry with them the solemnity of death, love, and longing and a tinge of anger as he wrestles with the facts and struggles to determine what went wrong on that fateful day. Santlofer offers a man’s perspective on emotional topics, of feeling inadequate on multiple levels, of wanting to have been a better husband and his desire to be a better father to their only daughter.”
-Kirkus Reviews
Featured News

Five years ago, author and artist Jonathan Santlofer was at home with his wife, food writer Joy Santlofer, when Joy began feeling feverish. Joy, who had undergone outpatient surgery Read more…

Sometimes the thing you least want to do becomes the very thing that touches other people most. I never wanted to write The Widowers Notebook, a book that chronicles my Read more…

“The Widower’s Notebook, by Jonathan Santlofer (Penguin). In this memoir, a novelist and artist contends with the sudden death of his wife. Santlofer adds new insights to the familiar genre Read more…

A hand goes up from the back of the room. It is an unexpected full house in a southern bookstore where I have been invited to talk about my memoir, Read more…
About
Jonathan Santlofer is an author and artist. His memoir The Widower’s Notebook is available from Penguin Random House Books. He is the author of the international bestselling novel, The Death Artist, as well as Color Blind, The Killing Art, The Murder Notebook, and Anatomy of Fear, which won the Nero Award for best crime novel of 2009. He recently created and edited The New York Times “Notable Book,” It Occurs To Me that I Am America, a collection of original work by more than 50 of today’s best known authors and artists. He is editor/contributor of The New York Times best selling serial novel Inherit the Dead, editor and contributor of LA NOIRE: The Collected Stories, Akashic Books’ The Marijuana Chronicles, and co-editor, contributor and illustrator of the short story anthology, The Dark End of the Street. His stories appear in numerous collections, including The Rich & the Dead, edited by Nelson De Mille, New Jersey Noir, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block’s two bestselling anthologies, In Sunlight and In Shadow and Alive In Form and Color. His stories have also appeared in such publications as Ellery Queen Magazine and the Strand Magazine.