The Beginner's Goodbye

Yet again she has articulated the supreme difficulties of human communication in a calmly insightful exploration of love and truth, grief and reality.

Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

This is what Tyler does better than almost any contemporary writer. She peers at the forgotten areas of the everyday, the bits that are hard to pinpoint... She looks at people -- at life -- from the inside out.

Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times

Her stories are quite unlike anyone else's

Cressida Connolly, Daily Telegraph

A near flawless novel of love and loss ... exquisitely poignant but unsentimental

Rosemary Goring, Sunday Herald

Tyler writes with a generosity of spirit and an emotional truthfulness that makes you forget the bare mechanics of plot

David Robinson, Week

Tyler strips away layers of everyday life to reveal the abyss of pain underneath but does so with such skill and sparkling wit it makes this a real celebration of life.

Vanessa Berridge, Daily Express

A simple, subtle and really honest account of how one man, Aaron, deals with the darkly comic death of his dumpy, clever and brilliant wife Dorothy... I finished it in one sitting.

Alix Walker, Stylist

A perfectly judged and brilliantly executed novel of loss and recovery.

Woman & Home

Tyler distilled.

Lady

Deeply rewarding novel about grief and hope, infused with gentle humour

Sunday Times

Richer and more alive than the best work almost any other writer is producing

Cressida Connolly, Daily Telegraph

A funny, gently moving and insightful book.

Liam Heylin, Irish Examiner

What could be mawkish and cloying is gentle and touching, not least because she is a very funny writer.

Michael Prodger, Financial Times

In Tyler’s small slices of life there is poetry and wisdom...artistically subtle and emotionally satisfying

Elaine Showalter, Guardian

The ending teeters on the brink of sentimentality but such is her psychological insight, the truth of her writing, that if she says unlikely happy endings are possible, I believe her.

Jake Kerridge, Sunday Express

This meticulous, gently humorous novel is concerned with the effects of grief, the stop-start nature of moving on and the role of friendships, however imperfect, in facing catastrophe. [Tyler] remains as gimlet-eyed as ever in portraying ordinary lives that have become unmoored.

Metro

This novel's great achievement is to capture the tensions and subtleties of a married life cut short… I read [it] virtually in one sitting, but that's a fairly common experience with Anne Tyler books… I didn't want it to end. Which is also a fairly common Tyler thing.

Viv Groskop, Independent on Sunday

A brilliantly observed and mercifully unsentimental examination of the emotional arc of grief

The Times, Sarah Vine

A perfectly judged and brilliantly executed novel of loss and recovery

Fanny Blake, Woman & Home

All Hail Anne Tyler

Sunday Times

A carefully observed study of grief and its trajectory

Pamela Norris, Literary Review

Tyler uses simple, elegant prose to manifest her particular brands of realism and humour

Freya McClelland, Independent

She's a master storyteller and inventor of character

Vanessa Berridge, Daily Express

The Beginner’s Goodbye is a very funny book … every incident is at once recognizably true to life and yet somehow utterly off-kilter.

Edmund Gordon, Times Literary Supplement

Such clear-eyed acceptance of life's fragility, and such a delicate way with it: this attitude lies behind all of Tyler's work

Edmund Gordon, TLS

A terrific writer... She's changed my perception on life'

Anna Chancellor

Both compelling and deeply touching, once you start reading you won’t want The Beginner’s Goodbye to end

Hannah Britt, Daily Express

It begins with one of those sentences that impels you to read on…Tyler’s haunting tale of love and loss is intelligent, unsentimental and often wryly funny

The Lady

Exhibit[s] all the delicious readability that admirers of Tyler expect

Brandon Robshaw, Independent on Sunday

Both compelling and deeply touching, once you start reading you won't want The Beginner's Goodbye to end

Hannah Britt, Scottish Daily Express

Tyler's playful humour imbues this unsentimental portrait of a mismatched marriage

Emma Hagestadt, Independent

A cleverly observed tale of an imperfect relationship and grief

Big Issue in the North

A beautifully poignant portrait of marriage, loss and grief

Good Housekeeping

A bittersweet, utterly beguiling story of love and loss from a brilliant writer

John Koski, Mail on Sunday

A lovely, stylish way to write a novel about marriage

William Leith, Evening Standard

An emotionally satisfying book with wise and moving moments

Good Housekeeping

Brims with wry perceptiveness and rueful humour

Peter Kemp, Sunday Times (Books of the Year)

Brilliantly observed and mercifully unsentimental

The Times

This novel's great achievement is to capture the tensions and subtleties of a married life cut short… I read it virtually in one sitting, but that's a fairly common experience with Anne Tyler books… I didn't want it to end. Which is also a fairly common Tyler thing

Viv Groskop, Independent on Sunday