A Widow for One Year

I had already read this book twice before and that is rare for me to re-read many books.

This edition was absolutely beautiful - especially at the VERY affordable price. Excellent Condition and Hand Signed by the Author.

I LOVE John Irving and I really almost every novel he's written....THE CIDER HOUSE RULES, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE, A PRAYER FOR OWN MEANY (Such a great Book).

Something about this book touched me in an incredible way. I have often cried reading John Irving .....If only for the beauty of his writing but this story (Which I never thought would move me like it did) and it affected me in life changing ways.

I had to buy a new copy because I have loaned mine out (Many Times) and never got it back and I really needed this to be in my "Lifetime Library".

Pretzels Baby
Bill

If you don't know what I'm talking about: [...]

For those who do like real stories with real people with real passion, talent, happiness and all the bad things, which can happen to all of us. To thom, who like people out of the ordinary, those who are not perfect, but still live a valuable life. For those who appreciate people who make an impact and inspire others. Those who like high quality literature.

The titular “Widow for One Year” is Ruth Cole, one of the book’s main characters, although she is only a widow in the last of the three sections into which it is divided. (The phrase also has another meaning in the context of the story). Each of these sections deals with a critical period in Ruth’s life. When we first meet her, in 1958, she is only four years old. Her childhood is not a happy one because her parents have become estranged from one another and are on the verge of divorce. Both, especially Ruth's mother Marion, are haunted by memories of the deaths of their two sons in a road accident. (Throughout her life Ruth will continue to be haunted, metaphorically speaking, by the ghosts of these two older brothers who died before she was born). Ruth, in fact, is a relatively minor character in this part of the book, the main focus of which is an affair between Marion and Eddie O'Hare, a teenage schoolboy working as a temporary assistant to Ruth’s father Ted, a writer of children’s fiction. In Part II, the year is 1990 and Ruth, now aged 36 and a successful novelist, is still single. Her life, however, is changed by a strange incident during a trip to Europe to promote her work. Part III is set in 1995. During the last five years Ruth has been married and widowed, and the story describes how she falls in love again.

Part I of the novel was later filmed on its own as “The Door in the Floor”. (The title is taken from one of Ted Cole’s children’s stories). This first section could, in fact, have made a good short novel in its own right, but John Irving doesn’t really do short novels. He is a great admirer of Dickens, and everything he writes seems to be Dickensian both in its length and in its complexity. He also, in this novel at least, has a Dickens-like ability to unite seemingly unrelated plot elements. On the face of it there would not appear to be much of a connection between a love affair on Long Island in the summer of 1958 and the murder of a prostitute in the red-light district of Amsterdam 32 years later, yet Irving is able to incorporate both into a coherent and satisfying plot. (I must say that this talent was less in evidence in some of Irving’s earlier novels, such as “The Hotel New Hampshire”. That book also deals with prostitution in a European city, in that case Vienna, but there the Viennese scenes did not seem at all well integrated with the American ones, giving the novel something of a disjointed feel).

The blurb on the back of my edition describes Ruth as “not conventionally nice”. This is doubtless true, but then conventionally nice people rarely make interesting subjects for novels, which is why those nineteenth-century novelists who seemed to think that their main duty was to provide their readers with heroic exemplars of unalloyed virtue can seem so insipid today. Nevertheless, I felt that Irving managed to make Ruth both likeable- which is not always the same thing as conventionally nice, and certainly not the same thing as conventionally good- and interesting. He also managed to do the same thing with most of his other characters, except of course those we are supposed to dislike, such as the embittered and spiteful old lady who takes exception to something Ruth has written and thereafter dogs her footsteps. The two exceptions are perhaps Ruth's “best friend” Hannah and her husband Allan. Allan is rather sketchily drawn, and Hannah seems far from being not only conventionally nice but also nice in any unconventional sense of the word. We are not necessarily supposed to like Hannah, but we are, I think, supposed to understand why Ruth likes her enough to choose her as her best friend, and in this respect I do not think Irving succeeds.

He does, however, succeed where his other main characters are concerned. The young Eddie emerges as a character in his own right, not just as a victim of an older woman’s desires, which makes it easier for Irving to reintroduce him later as an adult. Characters who are shown simply as victims and as nothing else do not make for interesting reading. Marion is in some ways a flawed personality, and not just in her seduction of a sixteen-year-old boy, and yet Irving draws a psychologically credible portrait of her which enables us to understand her behaviour even if we cannot approve of it. Her affair with Eddie is a symptom, rather than a cause, of the breakdown of her marriage, which has been put under unbearable strain by her husband’s womanising. Ted himself, although he behaves dreadfully towards not only Marion but also his assorted mistresses- one of whom even attempts to kill him after being discarded- deserves some sympathy as a bereaved father, and he is allowed some decent qualities such as his love for Ruth. Another well-drawn figure is Harry Hoekstra, the Dutch detective investigating the killing of the prostitute.

I find that, as a general rule, novels whose main character is a novelist are exercises in navel-gazing, best left on the bookshop or library shelf. Like most general rules, however, this one has exceptions, among which I am happy to include “A Widow for One Year”, even though it features not one but four novelists in its cast; besides Ruth and her father, two other characters take to writing fiction in later life. Irving is able to use this plot device to make some interesting observations about the writer’s life and the relationship between the writer’s life and his or her art. He gives some tantalising details about Ruth’s novels; it was disappointing to consider that these are merely “fictitious works of fiction” and that I cannot order them from my local bookshop.

The writer’s life, however, is only one of a number of themes which Irving touches upon in this novel. Most of his other themes, apart from those of grief and bereavement, are connected with sex and relationships, including adultery, prostitution, older woman/younger man affairs, older man/younger woman affairs and sexual violence. Irving manages not only to say something of interest about these various topics but also to integrate them into his narrative. This is a novel well worth reading.

Mr. Irving's book is broken up into three sections which could be treated as separate stories in themselves. It is understandable that the movie 'A Door in the Floor' based upon the first section of the book, which occurs during the Summer of 1958 on Long Island, was a stand-alone film. I found it to be the most entertaining portion of the book. It was a good mixture of seriousness, introspection, and humor despite it revolving around the death of the parents' two teenage sons in an accident. The four main characters, Ted Cole, Marion Cole, Ruth Cole, and Eddie O'Hare are each given ample time to develop into well-rounded individuals. Like all people, the three adults had qualities to admire and other aspects which were repellent. The central argument, I believe, is about the repercussions of loss and how it can affect not only the close survivors but also people tangential to them. However, prudes be forewarned, the story is brimming with sexual situations. The episodes are not highly graphic and would probably be considered very light porn to most readers.

The second section titled 'Fall 1990' begins in the United States but then, unexpectedly veers into Ruth, who is now a world-renowned 36-year-old author, taking a trip to Amsterdam and involved in research for her next novel. It focuses a lot of attention on the city's famous red-light district and prostitutes. While I found it somewhat interesting, it was a jarring departure from the first section. It did, however, explain the author's creative process as well as her attitudes about book tours and fans. It was the least interesting area of the novel for me. The third section titled 'Fall 1995' begins once again in Amsterdam but focuses on developing two minor characters from the previous section, retired Dutch police sergeant Hank Hoekstra and the prostitute Rooie Dolores. I liked that time was spent fleshing out Rooie's life instead of leaving her as a one-dimensional hooker. Also, Ruth's longtime adult relationship with Hannah Grant did not seem plausible. Of course, it may be simply because I found Hannah Grant to be a highly superficial, coarse, sexual predator. She was a female version of Ruth's dad Ted but without any charm or verbal refinement. How anyone could endure such a person for years is beyond me.

All three sections eventually come together towards the end of the novel but it requires the reader to have patience while reading the thing. Much like his other works I've read, the hilarious situations which help drive the story in the beginning are absent the deeper you get into his tale. It becomes one serious episode after another. I found the story ended at a satisfying point without tying everything up in a neat little bow. Mr. Irving's work is mostly engaging and often thought-provoking about the nature of grief. All four major characters are examples of how unexpected deaths continually ripple through a person's life. People don't "get over" such losses. They adapt or at least try to adapt. It ends on a positive note.

I started this book after failing to complete two poorly written novels. At last, I thought, here is someone who can really write. And yes John Irving can certainly write well. I also found the characters to be interesting and believable, overall, and there are some very memorable scenes. Unfortunately, there is a whole lot of nonsense in this book too. For one thing, writers are observers rather than doers, so writing about a fictional writer writing about another writer - stop PLEASE!. Then there is the lapsing into the God-like narrator who simply must tell us what will happen in the future, whether or not we want or need to know. Eddy would never ... Ruth would discover etc etc. There are whole paragraphs about what will happen at some unspecified point in the future and it is unconvincing. We want to be engaged in the present because that is what seems real and where the book has power. All in all, this novel is like a meal composed by a good chef who decides to use everything in his refrigerator, as a personal challenge or maybe just for the hell of it. There are some tasty bits but much that is unappetizing. I would advise Mr Irving to forget all those literary devices and resist experimental notions. Just let your characters breathe and the story develop organically and tell your literary critic brain to get the heck out of the way. And a note to your editor: there are 200 pages of rubbish in this 500 page book. This could have been a very good book if you had applied the discipline that the author seems to lack.

I jokingly assign an "Irving Score" to each of John Irving's novels as I complete them, seeing how many of the four themes he seems to enjoy the most make an appearance: New Hampshire, bears, Vienna, and wrestling. "A Widow for One Year" largely departs from this checklist (excepting a mention of Phillips Exeter Academy) but still falls back on familiar territory as the story progresses.

The novel examines the characters' lives in three different time periods (1958, 1990, and 1995), and the first section is without a doubt the most memorable. The beginning draws the reader right in, and contains enticing nuggets of foreshadowing that tease how intriguing the relationships between the characters will be as the story continues. Irving deftly switches between comic scenes and more poignant moments, a talent he has always shown a tremendous capacity for.

Unfortunately, the narrative goes off course in the final two sections. While the first section does an excellent job of establishing characters, the latter part of the book fails to develop it in a satisfactory way. The relationship between protagonist Ruth Cole, her parents, and her mother's young lover Eddie is pushed to the background in favor of the perplexing introduction of a few additional characters revolving around a prostitute's murder in Amsterdam. Anyone who has read "A Prayer for Owen Meany" knows that endings aren't necessarily a weak point for Irving, but this awkward story shift doesn't hold nearly as much interest or lead to a satisfying payoff for the characters.

I always enjoy reading Irving's novels, and "A Widow for One Year" still features memorable characters and writing. It doesn't hold up as one of his more memorable tales, though.

This book is definitely worth reading but I have to agree with comments by other readers that it's not as strong as the Cider House Rules or A Prayer for Owen Meany. The first section of the novel pulls you in quickly, though I found protagonist Ruth even a bit irritating at age 4. In fact, most of the characters in the book are more unlikeable than not, so if that kind of thing bugs you, don't pick this one up. What stood out for me was the way in which I was always being surprised by what the characters did. In one respect, it made it interesting, but in another, it was discomforting in that I never felt like I could figure out any of them. I found the Amsterdam prostitute section to be wholly overdone. (Can I get an editor?) But I was happy he tied up all the threads. And yeah, what WAS with the BREAST thing? Even as humor (if that?) it went too far and became an unwelcome distraction. I never got bored with it, but I did find myself counting at 100 pages left. Still, I will always pick up John Irving.

With "A Widow for One Year," John Irving has created yet another group of compelling characters with all of the quirks, idiosyncrasies, tragedies, life problems, and baffling sense of optimism that we have come to expect from characters in a John Irving novel. He has also done what he does best--he puts those characters into no-win situations and somehow convinces us that they have figured out a way to win. And he does it with incomparable skill, scathing honesty, and dry, genuine humor.

Just about every character in this novel is a writer, and they all grapple with writerly problems--most notably, the distinction between what happens in their "real" lives and what happens in their fiction. As Irving shows, despite most writers' protestations to the contrary, they draw quite heavily on their real-life experiences as they create their fictional tales. Although this should come as absolutely no surprise to even the most casual fans of fiction, what is surprisingly eye-opening is the degree to which writers (at least the ones in this novel) are obsessed with the phenomenon of attempting to compartmentalize reality and fiction, as if they were two utterly different realms. Again, as Irving himself shows, the distinction is arbitrary--real-life can often seem life fiction, and the best fiction rings as true (if not truer) than reality.

Ted Cole, Marion Cole, Ruth Cole, and Eddie O'Hare compose a family of writers whose lives are defined by the fictions they create--both the kind they publish and the kind they tell themselves in order to survive--and the tragedies that befall them. Although the tragedies vary in scope from the profound (the death of sons) to the mundane (bad luck with boyfriends), each tragedy creates an absence that becomes a presence in the lives of the characters. And despite the interesting and absorbing plot that Irving develops around his characters--who stand with the characters from Garp, Cider House, and Owen Meany as the best Irving has ever created--the presence of absence is Irving's real subject here. Once again, Irving--one of the best contemporary storytellers--tells us a story that we need to hear.

Having really loved the moving and fabulous book A Prayer For Owen Meany, I was excited to pick up this book. I was just as absorbed in the lives of these characters and the plot line seemed like it was going somewhere.

However, it is a long book, and I guess when writing a long book it is easy to get sidetracked in what should have been subplots. This book claims it is about Ruth Cole's life and the description sounds that way. However, the book itself spends a little too much time on Eddie, Ruth's mom's teenaged lover, and his own viewpoints growing up.

While it is understandable that many boys may have crushes on older women, Eddie takes this obsession to the realm of the weird...allowing it to dominate how he sees women completely, even into college and as an adult. John Irving must have had a wild and crazy experience with a sexy cougar in his teens...because his favorite parts of this book were clearly the affair, Eddie's view of the affair, and the sexiness of that affair. John Irving relishes this steamy episode and obviously enjoyed writing about it.

Later, Ruth Cole makes a comeback with some interesting episodes in Amsterdam that seem little tied to her history. Or maybe I need to reread that part...I don't know. The friendship between her and Eddie promises more on the back of the book than the book itself provides. She herself seems to be an afterthought. The closet episode in Amsterdam is just inexplicable, probably because John Irving spent his valuable time characterizing Eddie and mom.

Another inexplicable moment...Ruth's father kind of sets up the affair between his wife and Eddie, believing that Ruth's mother's grief over her lost teeenaged sons would become sexualized over time. SAY WHAT??? This happens?

The cashmere sweater is completely fetishized to the point where I am grossed out at the mere mention of it. Come to think of it, Ruth's mother is just a collection of "turn-ons" for Eddie, and more importantly, John Irving himself.

After all that "book," the impression I am left with is that the most transformative experience a teenaged boy could go through is to have an affair with a much older woman, preferably one at least in her late thirties. I am a big enough girl to understand that complex novels will have morally ambiguous characters and situations, but this book seems to gleefully promote this agenda at the expense of its own complicated plot.

It's almost as if an afterword should have been published, written by Mary Kay Letourneau's now husband (but previous victim), extolling the awesomeness of being with a much older woman as a kid.

John Irving has once again written a story with fully realized, complex characters. Those who have read his previous books will find him delving into familiar themes: sexual coming of age, unspeakable tragedy, and the seedier side of European culture (in this case, Amsterdam's red light district). The results are mixed, with the beginning of the book far more interesting and satisfying than the end (small wonder the movie "The Door in the Floor" is based only on the first half of Irving's tome).

The story begins in the summer of 1958 on Long Island. Sixteen year old Eddie O'Hare takes a job working an assistant in the home of children's author/illustrator Ted Cole. It's a sad household with Ted and his wife, Marion, struggling to cope with the deaths of their two teenage sons years earlier. Marion is especially depressed and is unable to show any affection towards their young daughter, Ruth. She's also obsessed with the many pictures of her late sons that hang throughout the house. Ted dotes on Ruth, but is a flagrant womanizer, using his celebrity to attract mothers and their daughters into his studio to "pose" for him. Things become even more complicated when Marion has an affair with young Eddie.

Were the story to remain focused on the odd triangle of Marion, Ted and Eddie, it would stand alone as one of Irving's best novels. The relationships are complex and engaging, and Marion's inability to move on after the deaths of her sons is heart wrenching. Irving, however, chooses to make "A Widow for One Year" Ruth's story, following her into adulthood where she becomes successful as an author (as does Eddie on a smaller scale), but mostly unsuccessful in her personal relationships. It's a poor choice as Eddie, Ted and especially Marion are far more interesting characters. After taking a sordid and unnecessary turn through the red light district of Amsterdam, Ruth's story runs out of steam in a predictable and, sadly, emotionally flat ending.

First half: 5 stars

Second half: 1 star

When John Irving stumbles, his books can be overly pretentious and a touch too cute with the coincidences. When he hits the mark, Irving can produce some of the best American literature has to offer. A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR is Irving at his best. The book, in my opinion, is superior to Irving's earlier THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, which put the author on the radar.

The book takes place in three different years. In 1958, we meet Ruth, who is four years old and who walks in on her mother Marion having sex with sixteen year old Eddie. We soon discover the true tragedy of Ruth's family. Her two older brothers died horribly before she was born and Marion, her mother, has become so emotionally damaged as to be unable to connect with her single living child. Although Marion abandons her family during this time, her impact on both Ruth and Eddie is profound enough to change both their lives. Despite the fact that Marion disappears from the book early and does not reappear until a few pages from the end, A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR revolves just as much around her as it does around the other characters. Her pull is just that strong.

In 1990, Ruth and Eddie are now both writers but of widely different talents. Whereas Ruth's writing transcends her self and touches upon larger human issues, Eddie's books are mostly biographical and usually reflect his sexual encounters with Marion those many years ago. It is in this middle section that the readers really come to know and understand Ruth and Eddie. Ruth's success in her career is matched by her lack of such success in her personal life, while Eddie never really gets over the hole left by Marion abandoning everyone else's life. Much of this time is spent in Amsterdam, which Irving brings to life. Irving's portrayal of the characters is also more realistic, and therefore more emotionally accessible to the reader, than in some of his lesser works. By the end of this period of the book, the reader is emotionally attached to these people and really cares what happens to them.

Five years later, in 1995, Irving ties together loose ends and produces probably his most powerful ending for any of his novels. Marion's reappearance is not flashy, indeed it is subdued. Yet her presence is so powerful throughout the book that the emotional impact of her return is difficult to overstate. Irving touches upon major issues in A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR, including loss, abandonment, responsibility, and embodies them in believable and sympathetic characters. If one is not really a John Irving fan but likes to sample his best works, this book should be on the list.

I find John Irving very readable in general, and believe "Garp" to be his all-time masterpiece and point of reference when reviewing his other works. Taking this into consideration, I might be less critical of "Widow" if someone else had written it. The story lacked the humor that got us through the tragedies in "Garp". Once I got use to the fact that Irving uses a parent's worse nightmare in the plot (the loss of two children in a car accident)and, by a broad definition, pedophilia, then I was able to relax and enjoy the story.
As a former resident of Amsterdam, I read nostalgically Irving's description of de Wallen, the police station, that I bicycled by on a regular basis, and the Dutch persona. However, with the exception of Eddie, I didn't find many of the characters very likeable, except for the young Ruth and maybe her first husband, Allan. Although I understood Ted Cole's need to reach outward for female companionship, due to his wife's chronic depression from the loss of her sons, I found his egomania a bit much. I also found Marion's dessertion of Ruth rather unbelieveable. Leaving Ted was expected, but wouldn't a mother who already lost two children be overly protective and cling to the third?
In the Amsterdam scene where the prostitute got murdered (this was a point when I put the book down and thought I couldn't read on). I can't believe Ruth would have stood by and watched. Knowing what the store-fronts of the red light district look like (all glass), all she'd have to do was grab the floor lamp mentioned and smash the murderer and the window. Let's not forget what a strong arm she had from playing squash. She was a tough woman and I don't believe this character would have stood by and watched Roije be murdered. But her cop assures her that she did the right thing by freezing in fear(???) This is also perplexing, because she was a material witness to the murder and it was seemingly o.k. that she took off? Also the fact that she got the Dutch for her letter to the police from her young fan (was his name Jan?)in a stoned-out state, without him asking any questions as to what she was doing is also unbelievable. Stoned or not, her translation requests seem very odd and one would think they would be questioned. The character that I hated most was Hannah. Would someone like Ruth really befriend such a person? Would she be forgiven for sleeping with Ted? What about the patheticness of Ted's mistresses? Between Marion, Hannah and Ms. Vaughn, can we view Irving as a sexist? The only thing that says "no" is the patheticness of the male characters, which balances that one out. Plot aside, Irving is a seasoned writer and he knows how to write a story and has a great imagination, although I felt he sometimes went overboard on descriptions that were easily skimmed at no loss to the story. I will continue to read everything Irving writes. The Q & A at the back between author and editor was appreciated and gave insight into the story. Thanks.

Like many reviewers here on the store and elsewhere, I enjoyed reading A Widow for One Year, was caught up in the multi-generational plot, but I agree that ultimately the book was not as rewarding as A Prayer for Owen Meany (his masterpiece in my opinion) or even Garp.
The characters here are for the most part richly drawn, although their motives are not always entirely clear. The novel explores two main overriding themes, grief and sex, not necessarily in that order. We are introduced at the beginning to Ruth Cole, a 4 year old girl living in the Hamptons with her parents, who are grieving for the loss of their sons in a tragic automobile accident that predates the action in the novel. Ruth comes to know her deceased brothers through a series of photographs that are plastered all over the walls of their house, as the accident occured before she was born.
Ruth's parents deal with their grief very differently - father Ted, a successful author of children's books, is able to cope and resume his work, while his wife is unable to bear living in the house and has little affection for her daughter. There are numerous complicated and well developed relationships in the novel, such as the competition on the squash court between a grown and successful Ruth and her father, as well as Ruth's desire to learn more about her mother, and the very different relationships between Ruth and her husbands/boyfriends. Irving skillfully builds up the suspense in gradually giving us details about the fatal accident until Ted Cole, with a novelist's detached touch, provided a vivid and devastating account of the fateful crash that killed his sons.
The book is not without its faults however. Irving seems to obsess with numerous descriptions of Ruth's breasts for some odd reason. Some of the characters in the book, such as poor love-stricken Eddie (who falls for Ruth's mother when working for the Coles as a teenage writing assistant, and who remains captivated by older women throughout his life) are fairly one dimensional. I also thought the reappearance of Mrs. Cole in the Hamptons was a little forced. We never seem to understand why the portrait models of Ted Cole proceed, universally, to agree to degrade themselves and ultimately to despise him.
All in all, the novel provides an entertaining diversion (like most Irving novels) and he fortunately has ridden himself of the need to keep writing about bears and wrestling. Most of the characters in the book are writers, which gives Irving an interesting challenge of adopting different writing styles for each character, and then to include exerpts of their work. His skill at storytelling, and the freshness of his subject matter, make the reader forgive some of the contrivances of the plot.

I read this book after watching the extra features segment from the DVD, "The Door in the Floor." (Excellent movie; very well cast and acted.) Irving said he thought the director made a brilliant choice in only doing the first third of the book. I agree with him--Part I was very complete in and of itself. This decision also inspired me to read the rest of the book--clever marketing.

As to the book itself--Irving is maddenly good at what he does. He knows how to spin a compelling yarn and turn a clever phrase. I still have a lot of those phrases, e.g., 'a sound like someone trying not to make a sound,' bumping around in my head the way a musical refrain will sometimes get stuck in your head.

His use of omniscient POV was irritating, a literary throwback to the Victorian age of novel writing when it was believed that novels about society were paramount and the only way to render society was by repeated strolls through the inside of each character's skull. I have never liked omniscient and I still don't. I regard the pleasure of a good novel as akin to figuring out a clever puzzle. Good reading requires as much imagination as good writing. Hence, I prefer the less intrusive POVs with Objective being my favorite. Irving's omniscient was like listening to a director describe a movie scene-by-scene instead of just watching the movie. Still, Irving somehow made it work, and I waded through all 537 pages in spite of his POV.

Irving has a strongly defined writer's voice. That's not surprising since at this stage of his career he's far surpassed the requisite million words. However, the 'Irving Voice' has assumed it's own identity. It's now stronger than he is, so strong that in spite of their vast differences in personality, all his 'writers'--Ted, Ruth, Eddie, even Marion--did their writing in the Irving Voice. That seemed odd to me after the way Irving's narrator berated some of his 'writers' for lack of imagination.

His closer on p. 537 was exceptional. So many writer's treat the closer as no more than the period at the end of the sentence. Irving's closer was more of an exclamation point, greatly improving my impression of the overall quality of a book--the Three-Star I was going to give him suddenly became a Four. Moreover, I will read another Irving novel... eventually.

--Ejner Fulsang, author of "A Knavish Piece of Work," Aarhus Publishing

Although Ruth is the central character of the novel, isn't it of some little interest that Irving puts himself into the pages in the form of Eddie O'Hare? A young man of the dangerously boring 1950's, brought up by teachers at the famous Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire amid gossip and sports, preyed upon and seduced by an older woman, and finally he winds up as a blubbering novelist? Pretty good fun Irving pokes at himself through the ridiculously melancholy character of the memorable Eddie O'Hare. Early in the novel, Eddie shares a moment on the Long Island ferry with a clam-truck driver, apologizing in his adolescent embarrassment for his New-England-prep-school-status-crazed father. The clam-truck driver responds, "Don't sweat it, kid. We all got dads."

Yes, this book is a three parter. Part I chronicles the tragic downward arc of a famous children's writer and his wife and family. Part II takes us fast forward to present fresh calamity to the next generation (baby Ruth is now grown up and adventuring about Dutch brothels in search of her next novel). Part III ties up the loose ends after skipping forward another five years. Will Ruth marry? Will her mother ever turn up again? The story pulls the reader along well enough.

It's the characters that fascinate. As in all Irving's novels, the richly developed, highly quirky participants in the story make for a first class read. A testament to Irving's creative genius - Who else could create a novel with Dutch prostitutes, squash-playing Hamptonites and a love-making machine of a teen from New Hampshire? The reader is virtually adopted into this strange, dysfunctional family circle. By the end of 537 fast pages, we know the family pretty well. Though 'Owen Meany' and 'Cider House Rules' were better, Widow ranks in the upper echelon of the Irving oeuvre.

John Irving's "A Widow for One Year," perhaps his best work since "The World According to Garp" 20 years ago, concerns itself with familar John Irving territory - a dysfunctional family caught in a sea of grief resulting from a terrible tragedy. Anyone familar with John Irving knows that dysfunctional families is Irvings forte and "A Widow for One Year" demonstrates, without a doubt, that Mr. Irving may have no equal when writing stories of this nature. There are many levels to this novel, none of which can be appropriately discussed for this review. Ruth is the central character in Mr. Irving's novel. We are introduced to her at age 4 and continue on with her until Ruth is in her 40's. Ruth's story centers around her mother, Marion, who abandons her and her father at age 4 - Marion cannot cope with the tragic death of her 2 sons as well as the unhealthy relationship she has with Ted, her husband. Ruth, Ted and Marion, as a unit, wer! e dysfunctional. With Marion gone, Ted and Ruth are dysfunctional. And, as each get older, both Ruth and Ted try to manage with their own demons and dysfunctions. The sight alone of Ruth, at age 4, witnessing her mother having sex with the assistant her father hired to help him is enough to leave Ruth scarred. Interestingly, the novel focuses not only on Ruth, but also the assistant, Eddie and the father Ted - all of whom become writers. Infact, all the characters in this work are writers which makes this work highly personal. There is an interesting passage when Mr. Irving talks about imagination versus reality - can a writer imagine what is real? This alone could be discussed at great length and it is just one of the many areas which Mr. Irving explores that result from his personal encounters. Perhaps that is why "A Widow for One Year" is extraordinary - it appears not only highly personal but tackels an arena Mr. Irving knows well. Perhaps the one flaw ! in this work may be the ending which appeared to be too exp! ected, too easy. Nevertheless, this book should be a definite candidate for the National Book Award. Brillantly written and conceived, Mr. Irving writes about issues to be discussd amoung scholars and writers for years - perhaps placing this book in what one may call, "the classics."

John Irving readily admits that he writes "long, explicit, plot-driven novels," and that "to move the reader , emotionally, means more to [him] than persuading the reader intellectually." This rich, complex, novel grows its plot from characters struggling with what they have (emotionally) and what they want, and the gap that lies between. All the main characters in the book are writers, and they all struggle with their characters imagination and with their own. Ruth, who is a child in the opening scenes of the book, is in search of a mother, still, at the end of the book. Her search is made more complex by her success as a writer and her ability to conjure up experiences she doesn't think she can feel. Marion, Ruth's Mother, wants to be free of emotion and the responsibility emotion brings along with it. Ruth's best friend Hannah, a journalist, serves as a pesky narrator in her life, examining Ruth's fiction and arranging it as non-fiction. Eddie, a good-hearted bad writer, writes the story of his life over and over because it's the only story he knows. Ruth's father is a helpless womanizer whose fame is baffling, considering that he writes terrifying children's stories. Timothy and Thomas, dead before the book opens, are Ruth's brothers, seen only in photographs so powerful and realistic they remain pivotal characters in the book.
It's clear that with all these writers, there will be several other-book chapters within the main book, and occasionally the reader may have to re-orient out of other books back into the main plot. Irving does what he does in many of his books--spins a seemingly simple story that becomes more involved and complex, with details woven into the rich and wonderful cloth as the story develops. The weakest point of the story is the description of Ruth's new novel. Irving falters as he explains how a woman writer would handle the issues surrounding prostitution--power, shame, control, and money. The end of the novel closes around the plot in a tidy circle, showing the reader that life is cyclical, that seasons do return, and that many endings make wonderful beginnings.

How can the same author who wrote masterpieces such as A Prayer for Owen Meany, Ciderhouse Rules and The World According to Garp write A Widow for One Year? (And Son of a Circus, for that matter) He's one of the most gifted writers of this century, but I'm worried. In "Widow" he reuses old themes -- characters on the lookout for a long-gone parent (Owen Meany), long passages in Austria (Garp), an investigation of the world of whores (Jenny's investigation of lust in "Garp"), a child's misunderstanding of a word(the "undertoad" in "Garp," and one and one. I kept waiting for a bear ("Garp," the Hotel New Hampshire"). Eddie's story overshadowed the title character for the first half of the book. The interminable discussion of the pictures (and on the dust jacket) never re-entered the story.
I was heart-sick because I crave John Irving's work, and "Widow" was a serious failure. Irving takes a long time to write each novel -- he spends a lot of time rewriting (at a reading in Lansing, Michigan, he said, "I'm not a good writer, but I'm a great rewriter."). And in the past, his loving care and masterful handling of plot elevated his work to heights no other current author approached. But this book was full of flaws, including a passage in which he switched from Third Person omnicient voice to the First Person -- a breach of story-telling art. And, worst of all, I didn't empathize for any of the characters. I didn't have an emotional connection with any of them.
John Irving, come back. I miss you. No, I need you. Don't let me down, again, as you did in "A Widow for One Year."

When I think about a book written by John Irving, the picture that comes to mind is a vine; a vine that weaves within itself and spreads thick in it's own mass. This is the 3rd Irving book I have read. Irving uses some of the same themes in his many novels. Boarding schools, younger men with older women are some that immediately come to mind. This particular book is about a family that lives in The Hamptons. The father, Ted is an author of children's books. The wife, Marion, is also an author but she does not begin her career as a writer until later on in life. The family is ripped apart when a car accident kills their 2 sons. They have a daughter, Ruth, after the accident in an attempt to bring their family back together. When Ruth is 4, Ted hires a student, Eddie, to help him with his writing for the summer. At least, that is what he says. The book is split into 3 parts and covers almost 40 years. Irving takes these 4 characters and begins weaving his plot in such articulate detail, it hovers on the line of genius. After reading these books, I always feel like I missed the true meaning of the story and feel obligated to read it again. I did enjoy this novel, however, I felt overwhelmed on occasion in parts that dragged. I lost patience at times. This still does not take away from my respect for this writer who I think is one of the best in the business.

"More is more!" is John Irving's stated principle of writing and, in "A Widow for One Year", he sets out to deliver the same version of "more" that he has given in the past; namely a good dose of comic tragedy and somber redemption that should move anyone open to being moved. But while in the first and third sections Irving can still movingly use some of his (really) tried and true narrative tricks, he often gets bogged down in a literary debate about his vision of the novel instead realizing that vision.

There is nothing new, or even wrong with novels that discuss what it means to be a novel. Such novels and debates have an important place in literature. However, Irving fails on two counts in executing a meaningful inquiry. The first count is both the most irritating and glaringly obvious, namely, what he says runs counter to what he does. Irving writes, "Novels are not arguments, a story (must work) on its own merits". While I happen to agree with this statement and his general view of the novel, it certainly begs the question "so why are you arguing so much here?"

The second count is a matter of tone; Irving discusses the novel in bad faith. His is not a real inquiry, but an anticipation and preemptive attack on his critics. The novel's main character, Ruth Cole, is a novelist who Irving sends as a proxy on a book tour to answer questions and criticisms. One moment she will argue that any writer with a real imagination could create a character more interesting than a real person, and that her novels are not autobiographical, but then a critic will ask a question that has clearly been asked to Irving, and Irving engages the debate about him rather than tell a story about Ruth (Garp, among others, also had a body of work and situation strikingly similar to Irvings). How else are we supposed read this passage?:

"After three novels, Ruth was familiar with the charge that her characters were "recycled" from one book to the next, and that there were also "signature eccentricities" that she repeated in novel after novel. I suppose I do develop a fairly limited cast of characters, Ruth considered. But, in her experience, people who accused an author were usually referring to a detail that they hadn't liked the first time."

It's hard to take his sanctimoniousness about "story-telling" seriously when such commentary is scattered throughout his book.

Yet the passage offers a segue into another failure. Not only is this comment intrusive, and thus bad story-telling, but it gets his readers (or at least me) entirely wrong. Anyone familiar with Irving's work has seen so many of the same situations in "Widow" before, namely, humiliating sexual encounters, families falling apart, infidelity, boys schools, children's books, family deaths, attacks on literary critics, trips to Europe (though not in Vienna, often in the German speaking world), LOTS of breasts, and LOTS of writers. When a writer builds his story with so many of the same bricks, they begin to feel like stock plot devices or gimmicks. The emotional effect of a situation wears off when you feel that you've seen it before, especially when you liked it the first time. Its tough to be moving or comic while using the same material.

Possibly more frustrating than the novel's predictability, intrusive commentary, pre-emptive arguing, and plot gimmicks, is that there is so much in the "A Widow for One Year" that makes Irving great. If Irving can do one thing well, he can make you feel for his characters. Just when you are tired of hearing about "the nuts and bolts of storytelling", Irving can craft an incredibly touching scene. Irving is able to beautifully render what seems like Eddie O'Hare's sexual and independent coming of age, and Ruth Cole is an interesting and full character. While later in novel, the character of Eddie O'Hare falls flat, his reunion with Ruth Cole 32 years after he lived with her is incredible; I can see Ruth's trembling lip and dimpled chin now! This makes Irving's mistakes all the more regrettable, because the story's central situation is so promising and moving in places. If Irving would've followed his own advice and stuck to crafting a story, "A Widow for One Year" would've been more powerfully realized and less frustrating to read.

I am a huge Irving fan, and eagerly awaited reading this book. Overall, I wasn't disappointed, as it contained the memorable characters, gripping storyline, and entertaining shocks, suprises, and coincidences that one has come to expect from an Irving novel. My only complaint is that after finishing the book, and letting it sink in for a few days, I couldn't help but feel somewhat manipulated. My complaints aren't on the writing level necessarily, Irving as always is an amazing storyteller. What left a bad taste in my mouth is that I simply found that I disagreed with Irving on who I was supposed to feel sympathy for and who I was supposed to find fault with. In this novel Irving writes in such a way that seems to instruct us to think Ruth's father is some sort of evil cretin, when really, his only fault seems to be womanizing, and his treatment of the women he cavorts around with. Not that this isn't a legitimate personality flaw, but what was frustrating for me as a reader was that Irving seemed to imply that Ted, Ruth's father, was somehow a much lower form of life than Marion, Ruth's mother, who abandoned her daughter when she was a mere 4-years old. Some of the scenes involving Ted Cole just didn't feel realistic, but instead feel like author manipulation. In other words, it seems like Irving has Ted behave in a certain way just so that we wouldn't like him, and thus give the reader more sympathy for his ex-wife. I felt that Irving and the characters he created forgave Marion far to easily at the end of the book, and never really took her to task for her abandonment. Simply saying that she was a depressed woman doesn't cut it. I suppose I really shouldn't criticize a book too harshly just because I have a different moral opinion than the author, so in fairness I should mention that I found this book consistently entertaining and well worth your time, even if you find,like I did, that it is difficult to consider the book ultimately satisfying since you have such a different opinion of the characters than the author seems to.

A great entertainment. But is it a great novel? I really don't think so; now, can i explore and explain the difference? In "Owen Meany" Irving created a great plot and compelling characters who drag the reader along with them as they live into the future. Here, the plot is strong, though not as forceful as "Owen Meany", but the characters, i'm afraid, lack something. The most compelling character in the book is the one who is least in it: Marion, the wife who seduces the young Eddie O'Hare and then disappears for the next four hundred and twentysix pages. The heroine, Ruth, Marion's daughter, a successful writer, is attractive, well explained (the omniscient author), but not as strong a person as the missing Marion. Her friend Hannah, the sexual animal, is understandable (we know her motivations), but not attractive. Eddie is sympathetic, but also pathetic. I cannot say i dislike the book, because i enjoyed it; i do find Irving a distracting writer sometimes, though ~ i feel as though he is writing a "French Lieutenant's Woman" but doesn't have the same ability as (not less, just different from) Fowles. Perhaps i am actually expecting too much; to be a great entertainment should maybe be enough for a book; and i'm not sure that anything could have changed this into a great novel as well, in my opnion. At any rate, i shall continue to read Irving, and expect to enjoy his books.

I loved it. Irving tells a complex, quirky, fascinating story in a complex, quirky, fascinating way. You have to wrap your head around it. Thinking is required when reading John Irving. He's a master at his craft.

This story is about all the things in life we'd rather not talk about. A mother deserting her 4 year old daughter when she was unable to deal with her grief concerning the loss of two teenage sons gripped me. Eddie, a teenage boy developing a life long desire for this grieving mother never lets Marion be far from his thoughts. Ted, a womanizer with a penchant for younger women is left to raise Ruth. Ruth grows up to become a best selling author never able to let go of her anger toward her absent mother. Throw in a cop and a prostitute in the red light district in Amsterdam and the pages of this novel never stop turning.

I rated this novel 5 out of 5. It is a masterful display of the power of the written word. For me as an author, Irving is to be studied and disected. This one's a keeper.

Linda C. Wright
Author
One Clown Short

Besides having one of the best short stories I've read in awhile in The Red And Blue Air Mattress, John Irving's new novel contains a lot of the playfulness evident in The 158-pound Marriage, but laid aside in the last few; and not a bear to be found. The characters are drawn to one another in neediness that seems necessary and never cliché. I actually cheered at the end. And cried. And thought back on all the other Irving novels; he always walks that fine line with his deaths of children, sometimes dipping to maudlin sometimes almost tipping shamelessly into sentimentality. But he pulls it off again and again, no Wallendas in his family I'm sure. This novel reads well. I like the characters, even Hannah in her harshness can be very sympathetic. Eddie, though seen as sad and weak by most of the other people in the book, has that Owen Meany quality of hero. The last thirty pages or so were pure torture. I knew how I wanted the ending to be, but would Mr. Irving serve it up with the same flavors and gentleness? I didn't want to be born back ceaselessly to the past...Hurrah for John Irving! He laid a full table and sent the guests away satisfied. I would recommend this highly to his fans, and hope to initiate those who aren't familiar with this novel. And the children's story by Ted Cole, A Sound like someone Trying not to Make a Sound, superb!

The least fun reviews to write are for books like "A Widow for One Year" that are just OK. It's great to be able to praise a superb book and it's also fun to vent a little frustration about a bad book, but it's hard to find the right words to describe a book that is only so-so. I'll try anyway.
So far I've read two other Irving novels (I'll get around to reading more of them soon) "The Cider House Rules" was a good book (also a good movie) which maybe I didn't give enough credit. "The Fourth Hand" was a terrible book in every way. "A Widow for One Year" falls in between. The story is good, but suffers from average writing, nonsympathetic characters, heavy-handed foreshadowing, and some forced plot elements. Eddie was the only character I really cared about (maybe pitied is a better way to put it) none of the others seemed like really good people I could root for. The first part of the book set in 1958 has foreshadowing all over the place, enough so you almost don't need to read the rest of the book. That's something I harp on all the time because as I reader I WANT to be surprised. The forced plot elements are in the relationships between certain characters. Why does Eddie love Ruth's mom so much that he pines for her for 40 years? They slept together 60 times, but other than that there didn't seem to be much depth to the summer they shared in the Hamptons. Then why does Eddie switch allegiance to Ruth for one year after her first husband dies? There seemed no reason at all for Eddie to love Ruth, which is probably why that is quickly dropped after Ruth marries her second husband. Then of course is the rushed romance between Ruth and second husband Harry. Their only reason for hooking up seemed to be because he liked to read, she liked to write, and they both knew a prostitute in Amsterdam (Harry in fact solves the murder of said prostitute, which Ruth witnessed and gave him an anyonymous tip). Maybe it's just me, but I didn't feel that was enough for them to run off and get married (and as far as we know to have a successful marriage).
If you've ever thought about writing a book, I'd suggest reading this. It was a good mental excercise for me to think about which writer I most resemble: Ruth, Ruth's mom, Ruth's dad, or Eddie. Though if you think you write like either of Ruth's parents then you're probably in trouble.
The reason I give this three stars is that despite the shortcomings, the story was interesting. So I'd say to put this on your list of books to read, just not at the top.

Occasionally heartbreaking, funny and insightful, Irving's "Widow For One Year" nonetheless suffers from vast stretches of boring details about circumstances and people who engender very little intrigue. Additionally, the book's story depends on wholly improbably human situations, discomforting sexual bizarreness, and characters whose words and behavior reflect a cruelty that ultimately rings untrue. For all its flaws, though, the novel does contain its handful of classic passages, the best of which features Eddie's explanation for his sexual interest in elderly women:

"I try to see the whole woman," Eddie Said to Hannah. "Of course I recognize that she's old, but there are photographs -- or the equivalent of photographs in one's imagination of anyone's life. A whole life, I mean. I can picture her when she was much younger than I am -- because there are always gestures and expressions that are ingrained, ageless. An old woman doesn't have to see herself as an old woman, and neither do I. I try to see the whole life in her. There's something so moving about someone's whole life."

But these charming and lyrically powerful bursts of prose did little to cure my bewilderment at knowing that Irving spent four years working on this novel, routinely journeying to Amsterdam to research various places and characters, and after all that, ends up with believable characters who do completely unbelievable things. Particularly, Harry, the street cop of Amsterdam, ends up falling in love with Ruth, the novel's hero, going to Paris with her, moving to the states and agreeing to marry her ALL WITHIN WEEKS OF MEETING THE WOMAN.

Similarly, another customer reviewer below named Rebecca has her finger on the problem when she suggests that the novel expects its readers to accept the nonchalance with which Marion, Ruth's mother, copes with the loss of her sons by having a sexual affair with a 16-year-old boy because he looked like one of her dead sons. Huh? These incestuous implications compounded by Eddie's interest in sleeping with women who are in their 70s and 80s reveal a rather peculiar moralization of sexual intercourse (despite Eddie's eloquent explanation).

Equally distracting is Irving's apparent conviction that compelling dialogue must include an inordinate spewing of obscenities. At times, Ruth and Hannah are so incorrigibly and inexplicably foul-mouthed that they morph together into the same implausible character, echoing that generic postmodern sarcasm that makes it so impossible to distinguish between the characters of Delillo or even, at times but for different reasons, Virginia Woolf.

I also applaud Rebecca for pointing out how crudely Irving has us accept that Ted Cole, a man whose self-indulgence is an incurable destructive force in the lives of everyone around him (including his daughter), suddenly decides to leap all the way to the other side of the emotional spectrum, tormented by such compulsion over the consequences of his promiscuity in his daughter's life that he kills himself? Please. Irving ought to have spent more time developing these jagged dramatic devices rather than embellishing for page after tedious page on such wholly uninteresting events as Ruth's book-signings or Harry's innocuous interest in the prostitutes of Amsterdam.

What saves this book is Irving's powerful and subtle sense of humor as well as the novel's occasional flares of wisdom and warmth. Similarly rewarding is the taut suspense Irving builds throughout the novel as Marion's anticipated return to her daughter after having left her life for 37-years slowly comes about. It is here that Irving's novel is worthy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose "Love in a Time of Cholera" unravels a tale of love so deeply ingrained in the heart that it endures half a century of separation, bringing the couple together again and, sexually, for the very first time. Predictably, Marquez manages Irving's own plot with more tact and patience, and I would easily recommend giving Marquez's book a look before "Widow For One Year."

This deeply moving novel is the most satisfying John Irving reads since Owen Meany. It did remind me a bit too much of Garp at points - the dysfunctional/odd family situation, obession with sexual connotations (Ruth's breasts seem to get more attention than Ruth herself!), and the tragically comic situations that take place during this story - however, there is a new coat of paint on this 'scene', and it is different enough to hold you till the end.
As one review put it somewhere in the book, Irving is like "MAD magazine meets Charles Dickens". I really can't put it any better in a nutshell that that observation. He is, and will always be, one of my favorite authors. And 'Widow' is a fine addition to his repetoire of brilliant novels. Granted, Irving is not everyone's cuppa tea, as his reading does require a longer attention span than your average dog - something that a lot of today's 'thriller' authors cater to. However, it is apparent that John took a lot of time to carefully craft this mini-masterpiece of a novel into a touching, moving and endlessly interesting piece of literature. Is it his best? No. Is it worth your time? I'd say so. A MUST for all Irving fans, and actually a fairly decent introduction to him for 'newbies'.
I won't go into details of what happens, as it appears that a lot of other reviewers have already...what I can say is that John takes us on a whirlwind trip of some 50 years of the Cole family, and he carefully develops each character enough for you to begin to care, relate and wonder what happens to each of them - right till the highly satisfying emotional ending. This is worth the price of admission alone - enjoy it today!

While reading this book I was thinking, wow this is a really good book. By the end however I was getting a bit tired of it. The characters began by being well-developed by sadly I felt by the end of the novel their characteristics had been exaggerated to the point that they no longer rang true. The span of time was interesting although a bit over repeated. If you haven't figured out how old marion is and how long it's been you must have skipped a lot of pages. It did get a bit tedious at times with some repetitive details but I was able to the most part let that glide right on by.

It's a solid read. My only complaint would really be the exaggeration of the characters. It felt by the end of the book as if the writer was afraid that you would have some how missed the character traits and thus felt the need to point them out a bit more blatantly so that you wouldn't miss the overall connecting themes and overlaps. I found it took a great deal away from the reality of the book as the characters began to be one-dimensional by the end. A quote from the book that sums up a great deal... "What mattered was that the details seemed real, and that it was absolutely the best detail for the circumstances"

Ever since "The World According to Garp", I have been a diehard John Irving fan.  He did NOT disappoint me with "A Widow.."  Young Eddie O'Hare is pushed into a summer job by his didactic, boarding school professor of a father.  Originally intended to be a "writer's assistant" for Ted Cole (a children's story writer and illustrator who beds most of the young mothers he has model for his books), Eddie instead finds himself hopelessly in love with, and a lover of, Ted's wife, Marion.  Marion has lived in a bit of a post-traumatic haze since the violent deaths of her two beautiful teenaged boys, and this means she is not much of a mother to little Ruth (born after the boys died).  This novel is primarily told through Ruth, who becomes a great writer in her own right and eventually loves a good man (her own father having been a decent father but a terrible spouse).  While this all sounds somewhat dreary and even slightly soap-operatic, it is good, funny, slightly crazy story-telling.  One of the things I so like about Irving is that he is an emotional writer, or better said, he tells an emotional tale.  He is not one to drag you into a story, but rather, allows his readers to make their own decisions about why they like, dislike, favor, or root for any given character.  He builds complex protagonists and serves them up in a complicated and intelligent fashion.   The reader is sucked in and at the very end of the book one can close the back cover and smile.  It works, every time.

John Irving is one of my most favorite "serious" authors because, in addition to telling a story in which both the plot and the characters monopolize your attention from the first paragraph -- as this one certainly does -- he also tells you things about the world in general and the people in it that require you to think. But his plots and characters definitely are complex, many-layered constructions, impossible to summarize in a review. But what the hell.

Ruth Cole is a critically and financially successful novelist -- far more so than her father, Ted, a writer of rather creepy children's books and serial seducer of young mothers. The story begins in the summer of 1958 when Ruth, age four, is about to be deserted by her mother, Marion. The Coles had lost their two teenage boys in an automobile accident five years before (Ruth was an ill-advised attempt to replace them, sort of) and Marion is afraid to love another child. Ted makes it easy for her by hiring sixteen-year-old Eddie O'Hare from Phillips Exeter Academy as his "writer's assistant" for the summer. Eddie falls in love with Marion, they have a torrid three-month affair, and Eddie's life pattern is fixed. And the way Irving lays all this out, it's completely convincing, even though many of the other characters themselves raise their eyebrows at Eddie's fixation on older women.

But that's only the beginning. Other major themes include squash as a metaphor for more profound psychic competition, and the nature of bravery and "domestic heroism," and the nature of sexual accountability and of prostitution, and the connection between justified anger and revenge, and the life and fiction of Graham Greene (of whom Irving is a noted admirer). The author delves deeply into how a writer becomes a writer and what that does to perception of other people and of the world in general.

It's been my experience that women authors generally do better with male protagonists than male writers do with women. Irving seems to be the exception, though, because Ruth Cole is so convincingly portrayed -- as a woman -- that you tend to forget the gender of the author.

One of the most fascinating parts of the story is the genesis of Ruth's new novel during her book tour at the Frankfurt Book Fair and in Amsterdam: The gradual growth of the main plot in her unconscious, her search for the right protagonist and the best motivation for her actions, her understanding that she won't have a choice, in many ways, about how the book comes out. "I'm a comic novelist," she thinks during one of her readings. "Half the audience will take this to mean that I am not a serious novelist. But comedy is ingrained. A writer doesn't choose to be comic. You can choose a plot, . . . you can choose your characters. But comedy is not a choice; it just comes out that way." Notwithstanding that perceptive statement, this book contains some very comic scenes. Ted Cole's panicked flight on foot from his latest conquest in her big black Lincoln, which ends with him signing books, tattered and bleeding, in the local bookstore (a sanctuary reached by way of a privet hedge) verges on slapstick. And Ruth's careful dismantling of a violent lover with his own squash racket will have the women in the audience cheering.

However, something else comes of her visit to Amsterdam and her tentative research for a new novel, which ends in one of the most baldly-narrated scenes of horror I've ever read.

Foreshadowing is a useful technique for heightening tension, but it's difficult to do well, without giving away too much too soon. Irving, though, is a master of foreshadowing. There are perhaps a half-dozen major plot points in the story and while in each case you're aware that something is coming, you won't know what until you get there. Except for the Amsterdam section of the story. That one caught me completely off-guard.

Almost everyone in this book loses someone. Even before the story opens, Ted and Marion have lost their sons. Ted loses his wife. Ruth loses her mother. Eddie loses the only woman he will ever love. Sergeant Hoekstra loses both his friend and the witness to her murder. Then Ruth loses her husband. Almost everyone, male and female, is in some sense a "widow." This is one of those novels that will sit quietly on my shelves from now on, waiting for a periodic rereading -- which I promise it will have.

When I read Garp twenty years ago, I was completely blown away. For years it was my standard of excellence for novels. I found Irving's later books disappointing and gave up on him. The reviews for this book were so good that I decided to read him again - but this book did not live up to its promise. I think Ruth is a thinly disguised John Irving - check out the black t-shirt and black jeans Irving wears in his book jacket photo - Ruth's "signature" outfit. This might have been more interesting as a shorter, non-fiction work about what its like to be a best selling author. The parts of the book that describe the author's interactions with fans and detractors seemed very real. I found Irvings constant parenthetical remarks and forshadowings a bit annoying and they got in the way of the flow of the story. Only in certain sections (like Ruth's experiences in Amsterdam) did the story move forward in a compelling way. Most of the characters were a little to! o strange to be believable or sympathetic - Rooie was the only one for me that seemed to be the genuine article. This story could have been told more effectively in half the number of pages and with a few less plot contrivances.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the heart-stopping beauty of Marion, a central character near the beginning of the book. It's tough to get images that concrete in written words, but Irving handles it without strain. Its not just a physical description, its the way that the rest of the image is a bit darker, a bit fuzzier when Marion is in the picture, like Irving is using the depth of field in a photograph to highlight the subject, like her physical brilliance is so overwhelming that everything else is dimmed.
It's not that Marion's beauty is exactly central to the story, but the skill that Irving uses here seems to pop up all through the book. It's a carefully written book, in plain language, that competently and subtely handles overlapping undercurrents of the story. It feels like the characters drive their own actions, in their own voices, and intersect becuase they should, not because Irving is using them to move a plot forward. He's clearly writing on a different level than than anything I've read recently.
I thought this was most apparent in the first section, and less so as the story went on. In a way, the more external elements drove the plot, especially the mildly outlandish ones, the less jaw-dropping the book was for me.
There were a few bits that detracted from the flow for me, things that I think editors let Irving get away with because, well, he's Irving. He dwells an awful lot on a lead characters chest, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, and everyone is both a writer and a reader so voracious that they've all independently read every book relevant to the story. I left it at 5 stars, even with the flaws, because the good parts were so overpowering for me.
In all, the flaws as I saw them were not enough to detract from the elegance of the story. I put this book down only because I didn't want to take it all in at once, didn't want it to be over. Recommended without reservation.

This novel ranks with the best of Irving's catalog. It's an epic and yet a page turner. A movie (The Door in the Floor) has been made out of the drama of the first section, all about teenaged Eddie O'Hare's life on Long Island as a writer's assistant to the philandering and alcoholic Ted Cole. It is there that Eddie's life becomes entangled with 4-year old Ruth Cole's, as he has an affair with her mother (who is separated from Ted). After this charming summer tale, the novel moves forward into Eddie, Ruth, and Ted's lives 32 years later, and another set of dramatic entanglements, spanning the globe, takes place. It is no wonder that the film version could only tackle a portion of this story--there is no way to condense the amazing lives of these vivid characters into a standard Hollywood plot.

Every time I read this book, I am struck by how Irving responds to his own critics through the Ruth character. As an adult, Rule Cole is a successful author in her own right, much on the scale of fame Irving achieved. She responds to critics about her use of "signature eccentricities" and "repeated themes," and Irving is the master of repeated plot elements throughout his novels (boarding schools are repeated here, as well as prostitution). Ruth responds to criticism about a book that centers on the life of a writer, which is precisely what A Widow for One Year is. I get the impressed Irving uses the character of Ruth to express a lot of his emotion about being a writer.

This story ranks right up there with Garp and Owen Meany. It is a must-own for any Irving fan--a book to be treasured again and again.

The story, divided into three parts, starts with the summer of 1958 when the main character is still a 4-year-old child and her mother, the beautiful Marion Cole, fells in love with her husband's assisstent, 16-year-old Eddie O'Hare.
The terrific elements of extreme tragic, pathos and broad humor which are just typical for John Irving - and which seem to be the main reason for Irving's big success at writing one bestseller after the other - capture you right from the beginning on, pulling you deep into the sad and sometimes very funny world of Irving's characters.
M. Cole has to deal with the great loss of her beloved sons who died in a car crash and with her womanizing husband, Ted, who actually brings home the bacon by writing creepy children's books, but prefers to spend is spare-time seducing young mothers and drawing pornographic portraits of them before telling them to take a hike.
Richly detailed Irving tells the intense relationship that develops between Eddie and Marion, who both now that their relationship is only temporary and not going to last.
At the end of part I, Marion leaves Ted and Ruth (the child, whom she is not able to love since the terrible death of her two boys - Eddie somehow reminds her of) ... and Eddie who returns home with a broken heart.
Part II shows Ruth cole as a fully grown-up, successful writer, while Eddie who still loves her mother is a miserable writer with books like "Sixty Times" who all refer to the time he had spent with Marion (and all of his books deal with the great sex he had with her. Although Ruth is the literary equivalent to a Hollywood superstar, she is all but happy in her life until she finally fells in love with Alan Albright, her editor.
Remember the pathos/tragic/etc-thing? Alan dies of course, Ruth is a widow for one year, until she fells in love for a second time, this time with the Amsterdam cop Harry Hoekstra who tracks her down (and instantly fells in love with her, too) when a prostitute is found dead and there is only one witness ...
Take a guess.
Part III: With Harry Ruth finally manages to find eternal happiness, finally she is able to leave her strange feelings for her father (she does not know wheter to love or hate him for the way he is) behind, Marion shows up again.
Irving's "Widow for one year" deals with love, passion, and fugacity, a well-told tale of dramatic lives woven together through live and death, I can only recommend anyone to read.
And do not think this is a book for women only, because it deals with love, etc. I am not women either and I enjoyed reading this book very much, altough it is definitely not what I am usually reading. I like to read horror, si-fi, and fantasy-stories, but mostly I read everything I can get my hands on - and this book is just worth reading, not only because it is a very well-crafted story, but also because it is a very talented work of art, a good example of who proper writing should be done. If you still have your doubts about this book, just shove 'em behind and start reading. It is sure worth the time and an experience you will not forget too soon.
Just one more thing: I gave this book only four stars, because there were some small parts in between I did not like too much - but four crowns still is pretty good, isn't it? Decide for yourself!

It was Harry , the retired policeman the chosen one ! . The coincidences of life and the ages are always present in this book . For two persons to meet each other , one has to get together two dimensions :time and space . Both persons heve to be in the same place and at the same time . Ruth says , when she's contemplating the stars , that her next book would be about fortune . She's fascinated by the amount of facts in one's life where probability plays such an important role . Marion eats alone , ordering her wine by the glass and eating her meals with a novel . And adds that eating with a novel is not eating alone . And fantasy and magic are revealed in the relationship between Ruth and Harry , where love is made during the day and loud reading during the night . As a friend of mind has said how many books are written inside this book . So many characters of the book are writers and reflect on their books their own experiences , sometimes the same ones seen from different perspectives . As Durrell in the Alexandria Quator . And above all , Ruth Cole , if existed , would be a very interesting woman . Lucky Harry , if he existed too !

As a reader, you either love John Irving's novels or you hate them---he is definitely an acquired taste. As both a reader and a writer, I LOVE John Irving---his novels are quirky and funny, and I could only hope to write a novel as good as A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR. Lusty, quirky and laugh-out loud funny, A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR deals with love---between child and parent, between men and women, and the devastating grief of a parent's loss of a child. At the age of four, Ruth Cole is abandoned by her mother Marion, and left in the care of her father Ted, a writer of children's books and a notorious womanizer. A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR is essentially Ruth's story, following her life for the next thirty-six years as she becomes a best-selling novelist, and struggles to come to terms with her love-hate relationship with her father and her abandonment by her mother, as she searches for real love and longs for a family of her own. A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR is an engaging and compulsively readable novel, filled with eccentrically human characters and deep emotion. This is definitely one of Irving's best!

Since "Son of the Circus" is the only John Irving book I've not been able to finish, it was great to be once again enthralled with one of his novels. While "Widow" may not his most ambitious effort, it is probably his most accessible. I hope for first time Irving readers, this novel will lead them back to "Garp," "Owen" and "Cider House." I was most fascinated by the character of Harry, a READER. For as much as Irving bemoans the fates of writers, he exalts the position of a READER. Being both a writer and a reader, and having far more success as a reader, I was thrilled to meet a character as obsessed with books as I am. I enjoyed most of the characters, though none were as deeply drawn as characters in other Irving books. I have mixed feelings about Ruth and the way Irving portrayed her--but I thought her largely sympathetic. As always with Irving, though (except for "Circus"), it is refreshing to read a book that sounds as if a story is being read TO you, as well as BY you. He's one of the greats.

Like architects, writers often don't hit their stride until their fifties. Irving has always done a fine job of blending comic highs with tragic lows, but in 'A Widow for One Year,' he does it perfectly. He has gotten to the point where he can fine tune the controls of his story lines like a magician.
Irving's moral tales can be heavy handed and a little melodramatic. Sometimes his plot twists get ahead of his characters, and ingenuity out runs imagination. Ruth Cole says at one point that characters dictate plot lines, and although both Irving and his protagonist would dissaprove of this intuitive leap: I would guess that Irving has made quite a science of the mechanics of plot and character. A writer whose tales, like Dickens, are so deliberately instructive must be a scientist as well as an artist.
Ruth Cole is writer who does want her readers to think her novels are autobiographical, and it's a lot of fun watching her deal with writing issues that Irving himself must have had to deal with constantly.
As a side note: Ted Cole's children's books are so convincing. Wouldn't a John Irving children's book be excellent?