Jonathan Tropper knows how to tell about sad things sincerely, but not sentimentally; with humor, but without mockery. The novel “How to Talk to a Widower” is the story of a young man who is coping with the death of his wife, killed in an airplane crash, raising her teenage son, helping his pregnant sister, reconciling with the fiancé of another sister, trying to get used to the fact that his father has fallen into senile madness—and also understanding that it’s time for him to get out of his shell of grief and start a new life. And this task turns out to be the hardest. On this path he faces mistakes, difficulties, and revelations.