Yes, it's sad. It is a posthumous love letter, after all. But, what a love letter!
I'm talking about Calvin Trillin's newest About Alice.
Maybe you were here at the Library when Calvin Trillin received the annual Booked for the Evening award in 2001.He entertained with dry wit and humor taking dead aim at the targets of his disdain. But readers have glimpsed his softer side through the years in all his writing about his family and his beloved wife, Alice. Alice passed away later in 2001. Trillin says his writing is diminished, as Alice was also his trusted editor.
This book, a gift to his late wife and to his readers, glistens with an abiding love of the kind that inspires envy among many. I heard Trillin express surprise that the readers contacting him were not the widows and widowers he expected to hear from, but rather mostly young women yearning for the kind of love he and Alice shared.
Trillin concludes with a description of Alice as "an incorrigible and ridiculous optimist." What better book to celebrate the optimism of true love ?