Widow for One Year [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

John Irving (Author), George Guidall (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 1998

14 cassettes / 24 1/4 hours
UNABRIDGED

"[Irving's] instincts are so basically sound, his talent for storytelling so bright and strong that he gets down to the truth of his time." -The New York Times Book Review

Twenty years after The World According to Garp, John Irving gives us a new novel about a family marked by tragedy. 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 critical 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 on 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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

John Irving's A Widow For One Year is the epic story of a family, dysfunctional at best, unable to cope with tragedy--or with each other. The unabridged audiobook, narrated by George Guidall (The Cat Who Sang for the Birds, The Inner Sanctum, The Legacy) draws the listener in with a crisp, methodical vocal presentation. Guidall portrays each character with a convincingly distinct voice, accurately impersonating the characters' intonations and verbal habits. The interaction between characters is both conversational and believable.

We first meet Ruth Cole in the summer of 1958 when she walks in on her mother having sex with 16-year-old Eddie O'Hare, the assistant to Ruth's alcoholic father. The death of Ruth's older brothers (years before she was born) turns her mother, Marion, into a zombie who is unable to love her surviving daughter. Ted Cole is a semisuccessful writer and illustrator of disturbingly creepy children's novels. His womanizing habits prove he's "as deceitful as a damaged condom," but he remains the only stable figure in Ruth's life. The tempestuous tale fast-forwards to the year 1990 when Ruth's soaring writing career is faring far better than her lackluster love life. The final segment of the novel ends in 1995 when 41-year-old Ruth is ready to fall in love for the first time.

This profoundly absorbing story expresses the depths of misery and the healing power of love. Irving writes as a true storyteller, and Guidall executes the narrative with vigor and enthusiasm. (Running time: 24.5 hours, 14 cassettes) --Gina Kaysen

From Library Journal

"In the world according to Garp, we're all terminal cases." This sentence ends both Irving's comic and tragic novel and its wonderful audio adaptation, read disarmingly by Michael Prichard. We hear the familiar story of T.S. Garp; his mother, Jenny Fields; and Garp's wife, family, friends, and lovers. We also see Garp's efforts to establish himself as a serious author and his involvement in sexual politics. In contrast, Jenny's memoirs establish her as a feminist leader. This work is funny, sexual, serious, and sad. Prichard's narration adds a wonderful dimension to the story. Plus, Irving opens with a terrific introduction to mark the novel's 20th anniversary. This wise and unique tale is as fresh today as it was when first published in 1978. Obviously, a required purchase for all audio collections and required listening for all Irving fans. Irving's (A Son of the Circus, Audio Reviews, LJ 12/94) new novel echoes Garp through tracing the complicated life of novelist Ruth Cole. Divided into three parts, the book views Ruth's life and relationships at age four in 1958, age 36 in 1990, and age 41 in 1995. In the first part, Ruth's mother, devastated by the loss of two sons, leaves her daughter and womanizing husband after a brief love affair with a teenage boy. Part 2 focuses on Ruth's book tour in Europe while coming to grips with a poor love life and considering marriage to an older man. Part 3 traces Ruth's short widowhood and her marriage to the Dutch policeman who solves the murder to which she was a witness. Like Garp, this is a complex, sad, and quite compelling tale. Narrator George Guidall's reading adds to the texture of the story. And like the audio adaptation of Garp, this wonderful novel is a required purchase for all audio collections.?Stephen L. Hupp, Univ. of Pittsburgh at Johnstown Lib., PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Random House Audio; Unabridged edition (May 5, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037540290X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375402906
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 4.2 x 2.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (595 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,286,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > Books on Cassette > Authors, A-Z > ( I ) > Irving, John

More About the Author

John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. He has been nominated for a National Book Award three times-winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. He also received an O. Henry Award, in 1981, for the short story "Interior Space." In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules-a film with seven Academy Award nominations. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Last Night in Twisted River is John Irving's twelfth novel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining but not great literature, February 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Widow for One Year (Paperback)

I have read almost all of John Irving's novels and have been thoroughly entertained by all of them. This novel is no exception. It was over 500 pages long yet I was able to read it very quickly. Unlike some other readers, it kept my attention to the end. I agree with others, though, that it is no Owen Meany or Ciderhouse Rules. I thought Marion, Ted, and Eddie were wonderfully wrought, believeable, and interesting characters. However, I found the protagonist, Ruth, to be pretty superficial. The only understanding I had of her character was that she had wonderful, large breasts. (I may have liked the book even better if her breasts were not mentioned so frequently.) I thought her character was the most interesting at age four. Futhermore, I found it difficult to see what the point was to this novel. What kind of social commentary is he making? Big breasted women are superior? Tragedies really screw up families? Ruth's gradual understanding of her mother's reasons for leaving her seems obvious and forced. Although I have these criticisms, I do give the novel four stars for its entertainment value. The story line was creative and the foreshadowing actually helped me stay interested. It was a good read, although I would not consider it a great literary achievement.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining but Flawed, July 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Widow for One Year (Paperback)

John Irving has again given us a sprawling, multi-generational saga of personal heartache and how family members come to grips with tragedy. Like many of his other novels, the characters in Widow for A Year suffer extreme loss, and yet this novel does not kill off characters as abruptly and carelessly as some of Irving's former novels (like the plane crash in Hotel New Hampshire, or the devastating car crash in Garp).

Essentially the themes of the novel are grief and sex, not necessarily in that order. The novel begins with 4 year old Ruth Cole walking in on her mother, who is in bed with a teenage writer's assistant hired by her estranged husband Ted, a writer of cildren's books. The mother, Marion, is overwhelmed with grief from the loss of her teenage sons in a car accident that predated the action in the novel, and Irving skillfully fills in a few details about the crash for much of the book, until Ted describes the accident in devastating detail later.

The grief affects Ted and Marion in different ways, and while he goes on with his life and continues writing children's horror stories, Marion simply cannot handle life in the house she shared with her boys. Some of the most effective passages in the novel concern the multitude of framed photographs taken of the late Cole boys scattered on the walls of their house in the Hamptons, and the efforts of sister little Ruth, (who was born after her brothers' death), to reimagine the shots after they are removed by her mom.

Marion ultimately becomes a strangely unsympathetic character, and her forced reappearance toward the end of the novel seems forced and contrived. Like another reviewer mentioned, Irivng, for some odd reason, often times paints a very limited picture of some characters and places but never misses an opportunity to remind us of the size of Ruth's breasts.

Nevertheless, the novel is entertaining, and since nearly every character in the story is a writer, Iriving gets to have some fun providing exerpts of each character's work. If you are an Irving fan, you will enjoy this book and get wrapped up in the story. However it is no Owen Meany.

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Favorite John Irving Novel, December 23, 2001

By 

Elizabeth Hendry (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Widow for One Year (Paperback)

A Widow for One Year has got to be my favorite John Irving novel. Many of his others, while I have enjoyed them, have put me off a little because the characters and/or the plot is a bit over the top, just too quirky for me. Widow, while imaginative and entertaining, never gets to that too much stage. It's a big novel, spanning about 40 years and has a satisfying, yet never hokey or corny ending. The characters, of course, are a bit quirky in their way, but their quirkiness is somehow more believable than in other Irving novels. The story is a lot of fun, and, because most of the characters are writers, allows Irving to explain and comment on the writing process. I felt at some times he was answering his own critics while discussing the criticism of his character-writers. He has fun with the whole thing, though, and never takes it too seriously, which is part of what makes this novel so enjoyable. Widow is really a human story about loss and how far some of us will go for love. Enjoy.