Good Grief is Good Reading
By Rawlins McKinney June 17, 2004 Issue

Good Grief is Lolly Winston’s first novel. I had never heard of her so I did a little research for clues about what I was getting into before I read her book. She previously wrote short stories and freelanced for publications as varied as Automotive News, The San Jose Mercury News, technical journals and women’s magazines such as Redbook, Family Circle, Working Mother, New Woman, Sunset and Lifetime. Not too promising.

Then I found her interview with Bookreporter. com. She lists some of her favorite authors: Flannery O’Connor, Vladimir Nabokov, Nick Hornby, Walker Percy, Mary Karr, George Saunders, Michael Cunningham, Aimee Bender, Melissa Bank, Jane Austen, Dave Barry, David Sedaris, Andre Dubus III, Sylvia Plath, Raymond Carver, Ethan Canin, Christie Hodgen, Ellen Sussman, J.D. Salinger, Tobias Wolff, Donald Barthelme. And then, her favorite novels: The Bell Jar, Lolita, About A Boy, Anna Karenina, The Hours and The Moviegoer. Now that esoteric potpourri of influences is promising.

So what is Good Grief? It’s not “women’s fiction” or “chick lit” (a term I despise along with “chick flick”). Winston says she wants George Clooney to read her book.

It’s not a literary novel. Could it be a beach book? Maybe, in that the narrative flows and it’s an easy read. But it has more substance than light seashore read.

The book is a paradox; Winston has written a funny novel about grief. It is not a tearjerker. You won’t need tissues or handkerchief. Sophie goes through a nervous breakdown but rather than feeling sorry for her I felt a little annoyed. At times she comes close to idealizing her dead husband and at other times she expresses her dissatisfaction with his slavish dedication to his job and her inability to get pregnant. I got the feeling that had her husband not died of cancer, there would have been some rocky times in store for the marriage, maybe even divorce.

Sophie snaps out of her blue funk craziness when she has to deal with her mother-inlaw and a screwed-up teenager she hooks up with through a Big Sister program. The mother-in-law goes through a rapid transition from a controller to dementia. With Sophie’s help, Crystal, the teenager (the book’s strongest character), evolves from a self-mutilating firebug to a helpmate and friend.

Good Grief opens with Sophie asking herself how can she be a widow. “Widows wear horn-rimmed glasses and cardigan sweaters that smell like mothballs and have crepe-paper skin and names like Gladys or Midge and meet with their friends once a week to play pinochle. I’m only thirty-six. I just got used to the idea of being married, only test-drove the words my husband for three years: My husband and I, my husband and I . . . after all that time being single.”

Her husband has been dead for three months. She has just joined a grief group but only at the urging of her shrink. Her condition deteriorates rapidly. Her job as a PR flack for Gorgatech, a pharmaceutical company, is overwhelming. She’s given the task of getting favorable news coverage for their latest product, a scrotal patch. When she blows this her boss, “a size two Armani jackhammer,” shows no sympathy. Sophie is unable to perform the simplest of tasks; she panics in a grocery store. He mother-in-law is putting pressure on her to pack up and get rid of her husband’s clothes; Sophie wants to keep them. Her depression hits its nadir when Sophia shows up at an important office meeting in her robe and bedroom slippers.

Sophia quits her job and moves to Ashland, Ore., where she works her way out of her depressive breakdown. Her first job as a waitress in an upscale restaurant is another disaster. Instead of firing her, the chef moves her to the kitchen food prep table. Her well being is gradually restored to the point where she opens up her own bakery. Her focus on the new business, her mother-in-law’s deterioration and the wayward teenagers are all a part of her recovery. And, yes, good sex with a new actor boyfriend is a big help.

It doesn’t seem appropriate to describe a book about a depressed young widow as enjoyable. Yet that would be my one-word description of Good Grief. It’s an enjoyable first novel that whets your appetite for a second one.

Warner Books, 344 pages, available in bookstores and libraries.

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