A Widow for One Year | A Widow for One Year (Deluxe, Signed Edition)

Enough Damage To Go Around | A Widow for One Year (Deluxe, Signed Edition) | John Irving

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	• A Widow for One Year (Deluxe, Signed Edition) John Irving Unicycle Press, Incorporated, 1998 - 560 pages average customer review:based on 580 reviews view larger image
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Writing about writers - who are writing about writers

Irving is an excellent writer, with fluid prose and clear characterizations. His plots are compelling, and the stories involve effective human drama. But this book strikes me as self-indulgent to a too-large extent. The main characters are all wealthy folk, that live in a rarefied atmosphere redolent of specialized inks and more specialized neuroses. They are all either writers or writers-to-be - as though this were the only proper human ambition to have.

And the worst of it is that the writer who is his main character is writing about a writer - an endless loop of navel-gazing. Outside of that, there is real drama in the family interrelationships. All the characters, their actions and relationships revolve around the central drama of the deaths of 2 brothers, and the separation of their parents.

It is an excellent read, though I found the writer-writer-writer theme annoying enough to intrude into my suspension of disbelief.

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A Widow for One Year

An absorbing and quite a disturbing novel on so many levels. Vintage Irving at his best. Loved it as I do all of this great writer's books. Five stars at the very least.

Enough Damage To Go Around

John Irving's novel, A Widow For One Year, takes readers on a life-long journey through the lives of several characters. What struck me about this book was the story's common thread of psychological dysfunction and how one person's damage profoundly affects others.

In the first part of the book, a sixteen-year-old aspiring writer named Eddie gets his dream job of working with a famous writer named Ted Cole. Upon arriving at the Cole residence, Eddie is soon seduced by Cole's wife, Marion, who has retreated from life due to the death of her own teenage sons some years early. Marion has had almost nothing to do with her four-year-old daughter, Ruth, at this point. Finally, Marion abandons her family, leaving Eddie and Ruth wrecked.

The story then shifts forward in time and focuses on Eddie and Ruth, both of whom have become writers. Eddie struggles with his craft as much as he does with being abandoned by Marion. Ruth is more accomplished but finds herself in Amsterdam's red-light district working out her own demons. This part of the story was a bit strained, but in the context of the first part, makes sense.

Finally, Irving brings it all together in the last part. Marion returns home after her long absence. The ripples she created come home to roost but in an articulate way for all involved.

What I enjoyed most about this book was Irving's ability to relate the cause and effect of a tragedy's consequences. The Marion character is not a sympathetic one, yet she earns respect along the way. At the same time, the other characters plow through life carrying burdens that were placed upon them by others only to realize that at some point they can put them down. There's a lesson there, one that sadly many people learn too late.

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Tom woke up, but Tim did not.

Some books are meant for audiences with interests in themes such as death of adolescent children, its affect on the married couple, how each copes, father-daughter bond and sexual relationship between older woman and younger man. "A Widow for One Year" addresses these themes in fine writing. Ted Cole, the husband, is a flawed character who turns to adultery more avidly after the accident that kills his two teenage sons. Ruth Cole, the mother, mourns by withdrawing from the world and withholding affection from her younger daughter conceived after the accident. This is Mr. Irving's first novel I read and it easily met my expectations. The only thing I wish he had reconsidered was length of the book. At over 400 pages the book begins to loose some of its early magic by page 325 or so. Also, I recommend watching the movie version in which Kim Basinger and Jeff Bridges are great as a couple.

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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.

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