A Widow For One Year: Summary and book reviews of A Widow For One Year by John Irving, plus links to an excerpt from A Widow For One Year and a biography of John Irving.

Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character--a "difficult" woman. By no means is she conventionally "nice," but she will never be forgotten. Ruth's story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life. When we first meet her--on Long Island, in the summer of 1958--Ruth is only four. The second window into Ruth's life opens in the fall of 1990, when Ruth is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason. A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She's about to fall in love for the first time. Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.

Media Reviews

New York Times Irving's most entertaining and persuasive novel since his 1978 bestseller, The World According to Garp.   The LA Times Book Review Deeply affecting...The pleasures of this rich and beautiful book are manifold. To be human is to savor them.   San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle John Irving as at the peak of his considerable powers in A Widow for One Year, his most intricate and fully imagined novel.   Salon - Peter Kurth A Widow for One Year, the enormously entertaining new novel by John Irving, is all narrative, all character, all author. This is to be expected from Irving, a writer who describes his fiction as "old-fashioned" and looks to 19th century novels as the model for his work. It's the measure of his achievement here that in a book spanning 40 years and nearly 600 pages, you feel when it's over that you've spent your time wisely, not just with the story and its protagonists, but with their creator, too, whose voice remains as forceful and distinctive as his characters' without once intruding where it doesn't belong.   Library Journal - Edward B. St. John As in The World According to Garp, nearly every character in the book churns out reams of Irving-esque prose. It's hard to empathize with these dreary people, and their picaresque adventures seem to lack any thematic relevance. Instead of ending, the book simply runs out of steam. Still, there are legions of rabid Irving fans who will want to read every word he has written.   Kirkus Reviews Irving's latest LBM (Loose Baggy Monster, that is), which portrays with serio-comic gusto the literary life and its impact on both writers and their families, is simultaneously one of his most intriguing books and one of his most self-indulgent and flaccid. .... A thoughtful, if diffuse, examination of how writers make art of their lives and loves without otherwise benefitting from the process.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Sheri Delvin
Writing a woman the way some man might like her
This is my first John Irving book. I'm sorry, but it is surprising to me that this book was written by a 77 year old man. It reads more like the inner world of a 27 year old man. The female characters are not believeable - except perhaps for the...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Billie Murphy
A keeper - thought provoking
I read this book when it was released and was fortunate to eventually find a leather bound, signed and numbered edition. I have all of John Irving's books and WIDOW FOR A YEAR is one of my all time favorites - NEVER begin to make the turn until...   Read More

Rated of 5 by angel
intriguing
A book that has the unique ability to trigger off the deepest compassion for the protagonists' fates as well as spark off a fascinatingly sensual pleasure in the reader. A book that makes you dream of beauty...A book that enables you to appreciate...   Read More

Rated of 5 by jeni dela cruz
i hope the film gives justice to the book. a haunting love story. erotic.

Rated of 5 by jim
Once again Irving has wowed me with his special art of story telling. And his penchant for developing a plot and throwing in a zinger at appropriate points is masterfully demonstrated here. And the settings are both interesting and educational...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Joan
Definately too long and drawn out. I almost gave up on it half way through. I didn't care for any of the characters...I could not get emotionally involved or attatched like I usually do when reading a good novel. I didn't feel that any of the...   Read More

...10 More Reader Reviews

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