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Title: A Widow for One Year by John Irving ISBN: 0-345-42471-9 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 23 March, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.58 (524 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Entertaining but not Irving's Best
Comment: Like many reviewers here on Amazon 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Characters live on in my questions
Comment: I've read the reviews of others, good and bad. For me, if I continue questioning a story, after I've read the last page, if I continue to wonder why a character did this or that, or why a writer wrote this or that, I can call it a good read. And that is how I feel about A Widow for One Year.
Why does Eddie continue to love Marion all those years? I'm not sure. I suspect it has to do with him being "stunted" all those years ago by experiencing a relationship he was not emotionally ready for, with a woman much too old for him. Why is Ruth's relationship with her father "perverse" as one reviewer described it? Because that is who Ted Cole is, a perverse man. I certainly found the obsession of both parents and the pictures to be far more abusive mentally to young Ruth than the sexual exploits of her father.
In any case, this book lives on for me through questions and reflections, and to be, that makes it good!
Rating: 4
Summary: The Door in the Floor
Comment: I first became interested in this novel when I saw a preview for the upcoming movie "The Door in the Floor" which is based upon this Irving novel. This is the first time I have read something by John Irving, and while I will admit that I found him to be an engaging story-teller, I was a little disappointed in the story itself. "A Widow for One Year" tells the tale of Ruth Cole at three different stages of her life. We first meet her as a four year old in 1958, and then again in 1990 and 1995.
The upcoming movie is obviously solely based on the first segment of this novel and I think that it is the strongest section of Irving's narrative. It tells of the unhappy marriage between Ruth's parents, the affair that her mother has with a 16 year old boy (not to mention the father's numerous affairs), and how in the end Ruth's mother has to escape the life she's afraid to have. This event will haunt Ruth for the rest of her life (as demonstrated in parts 2 and 3, in her string of bad relationships and fear of marriage). These next two parts of the narrative focus on Ruth's aging and her career, how she eventually marries and has a child, all the while searching for what would make her happy, even as she is still haunted with why her mother left her. She finds some solace through friendship with her mother's former lover, the grown-up Eddie O'Hare, a writer of autobiographical fiction who is still in love with Ruth's mother Marion.
The second and third setions of narrative seem to become bogged down with an overabundance of supporting characters. While these characters are richly drawn and believable, it detracts from the story at hand. Sometimes while I was reading, I wasn't entirely sure where the story would end end (especially during Ruth's forays into the red-light district of Amsterdam). When the conclusion finally arrives after almost 600 pages, it seems both drawn-out and too summarily wrapped up.
I found Irving to be an intrepid storyteller, and his characters are vivid and realistic. However, it seems strange that almost every main character in this novel is a writer. And after a while, one might begin to wonder if there's some sort of autobiographical writing taking place for Irving himself. The first part of this narrative is the strongest and I'd be tempted to say that it could stand alone; except we want to know what happens with Ruth, with Eddie, with her mother. Sometimes what we get seems more than enough; sometimes it seems to be barely enough.
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Title: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving ISBN: 0345361792 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 14 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The World According to Garp by John Irving, John Irving ISBN: 034536676X Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 03 November, 1990 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving ISBN: 034540047X Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 30 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Cider House Rules by John Irving ISBN: 0345387651 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 09 January, 1994 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: A Son of the Circus by John Irving ISBN: 0345389964 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 30 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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