The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating by Carole Radziwill

Okay, I admit it - I'm a fan of Carole Radziwill on The Read Housewives of New York - I love her sarcastic way of dealing with the drama the housewives constantly engage in and her way of not taking herself too seriously.  I also loved her first book, What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love.

The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating is a fun, smart, witty read about Claire Byrne's life after the death of her husband Charles.  Not only is Claire alone now, but she is treated differently by her friends now that she is a widow - friends are now worried about their husband's being too sympathetic too her, what to do with her at a dinner party and what to say to her.  As she decides it's time to move on and start dating and lose her "widow's virginity", it's hilarious to read about her dating adventures.  The book definitely feels very "New York" - (a lot of art & literary references I should have looked up while reading but didn't) and uptown.

One thing I did have a hard time understanding in this book is Claire's feelings about Charles - I was sure that their marriage was not a romantic one for the ages but she did have some feelings for him.  Those conflicted feelings were sometimes hard to understand as she tries to move on with dating and her life.

I would definitely recommend this book to my friends but would add a caution that there is lots of animal sex described (hilarious!), curse words but not graphic sex scenes.  I would not recommend this book to my mother or her friends.  I'd give this book 5 stars.

Review from Amazon:From Booklist

When Claire Byrne’s intellectual husband dies in a freak accident with a falling sculpture (a fake, at that), she must figure out how to be a widow. Her marriage was defined by the age gap, Charles’ insistence (academic and otherwise) that there is either love or sex (not both), and his frequent infidelities. Claire has almost no identity of her own, and she is convinced by friends to lose her widowed virginity and move on. Radziwill’s first novel (after her memoir, What Remains, 2005) is a very New York book, even when Claire travels to L.A. to interview (and sleep with) a movie star. There is a constant war between lightness and heaviness in the subject, in the story, and in the telling that seems intrinsic to city dwellers. The plot features a lot of takeout, and Claire sees multiple therapists, a psychic, and a botanomanist to get herself sorted out, which, by the end, she more or less does. Radziwill’s book may receive extra coverage due to her association with the Kennedys and her appearance on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. --Susan Maguire