"Meet Babe, the lovable and funny grief-stricken widow you'll take to your heart after the first paragraph of her story." "Babe's adored and adoring actor husband Michael has just died after a long and wrenching bout with cancer. Babe is not only as bereft as any fortyish widow after a blissful and only-too-short marriage; she is at sea, because of something more daunting than not knowing how to handle the income tax return. She is just beginning to realize to what extent she has put her life in the shadow of Michael's, even though he has been the first to try and convince her that she come into her own light." "Desperately and with built-in humor, Babe runs from one attempt at solace to the next. "Try religion." Babe tries them all, but they offer no help. (What they do offer are hilarious scenes like the pair of Jehovah's Witnesses who quickly find that this visit is very unlike the usual door-to-door proselytizing they'd been doing.)" ""Get professional help." Two therapists are recommended: one a tight-lipped, tight-everything orthodox Freudian, the other a chummy New Age Earth Mother. Babe can't decide, so she signs up for two sessions a week with each, with predictably tangled and amusing results." "In this astonishing, beautifully written and moving first novel, which Herbert Gold has called "a remarkable performance by a striking talent," Diane Shalet takes her heroine from one wryly comedic adventure to the next, and we begin to realize, as Babe herself does, that she is not just bouncing from mishap to mishap, but that through these experiences - strangely confirmed by the discovery of a message from her dead husband - this woman has found a life."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved