A Widow for One Year: A Novel (Hardcover)

by John Irving (Author) "One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole woke to the sound of lovemaking-it was..." (more)
Key Phrases: last bad boyfriend, print coater, mouse crawling between the walls, Eddie O'Hare, Ruth Cole, Ted Cole (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
John Irving fans will not be startled to find that A Widow for One Year is a sprawling farce-tragedy crawling with characters who are writers. In the opening scene, 4-year-old Ruth Cole walks in on her melancholy mother, Marion, who is in flagrante with 16-year-old Eddie, the driver for drunken Ted (Ruth's dad and Marion's estranged, womanizing husband).

Eddie spends the rest of his life obsessively writing novels like Sixty Times, his roman à clef about his 60 seductions by Marion. Ted is a failed novelist who gets rich and famous writing creepy children's stories based on tales he tells Ruth (such as The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls). Marion abandons Ruth, Ted, and Eddie and becomes a successful pseudonymous novelist. And Ruth becomes the most richly celebrated writer of them all because of her early training by Ted, who not only told her stories, but also helped her craft narratives to explain their home's many photographs of her brothers, who died in a gory car wreck the year before she was born. Grief over the boys is why Ruth's mother does not dare to love her.

Ruth, Irving's first female main character, works brilliantly, first as an imaginative, almost Salingeresque child coming to terms with her bewildering family, then as a grownup striving to understand her mother's motives--or at least to track her down. Ted is a mordantly funny caricature, interestingly sinister and plausibly self-justifying when most inexcusable. Eddie is a lovable schlemiel, yet not too sentimentally drawn. And what set pieces Irving can write! The story of the boys' death is horrific and effective in dramatizing the character of Ted, who narrates it. Ted's attempted murder by a spurned lover is as hilarious as the VW-down-the-marble-stairway scene in A Prayer for Owen Meany (which has been adapted by Disney Studios), though not quite on a par with the celebrated "Pension Grillparzer" episode in The World According to Garp (reissued in a 20th anniversary edition by Modern Library).

Irving has the effrontery to get away with practically any scene that comes into his head--Ruth winds up an eyewitness to a hooker's murder in Amsterdam, a Dutch detective starts tracking her down (just as Ruth is hunting Marion), and the multiple plot strands all converge in a finale that neatly echoes the opening scene. It's all done with the outrageously coincidental yet minutely realistic brio of Charles Dickens, with a sad, self-conscious jokiness like that of Irving's mentor, Kurt Vonnegut. --Tim Appelo

From Library Journal
The first half of Irving's ninth novel tells the story of Eddie O'Hare, a prep school student with literary aspirations who lands a job as a personal assistant to noted children's author Ted Cole in the summer of 1958. O'Hare spends most of the time in bed with Cole's wife, Marion. The second half of the book describes O'Hare's acquaintance, decades later, with Ruth Cole, Ted's daughter, who is also a successful writer. While researching her latest novel, Ruth witnesses the murder of an Amsterdam window prostitute. Irving tantalizes us with this promising subplot, then veers off in another direction. As in The World According to Garp (LJ 6/1/78), 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. For larger fiction collections.
-?Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch., Los Angeles
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 537 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st trade ed edition (May 5, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375501371
• ISBN-13: 978-0375501371
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (583 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,056,048 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 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.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Completely Engaging!, November 9, 1999

By	Maurice Williams "mauricewms" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I loved this book! A Widow For One Year is a story of a group of writers whose lives are intertwined through love affairs, friendships, and kinship. The fact that the characters are writers is a key component of the novel and the aspect that I enjoyed most. Irving takes the reader on a literary joy ride with characters and situations that are believable and exciting. He tells this story using a multi-voiced approach and he is able to change voice without any interruption to the story. At times he's narrative and at times he's providing information about the characters or plot though a work of fiction written by one the characters. Technically speaking, the book is written as perfectly as humanly possible (no doubt a Writing Fiction course could be taught with this novel as a guide) As a reader, the novel is extremely engaging; (no I didn't want to put it down). As a writer, the novel is informative and demonstrative (literally) of how good fiction is created. I'm certain that I'll be a better writer as a result of reading this book and unfortunately, for some authors, I'll be a lot more critical as a reader as well.

25 of 29 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 (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (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.