HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

A Widow for One Year: A Novel by John Irving
Loading...

A Widow for One Year: A Novel (original 1998; edition 1998)

by John Irving

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
8,4011101,015 (3.69)1 / 154
Fiction. Literature. Romance. HTML:A Widow For One Year will appeal to readers  who like old-fashioned storytelling mixed with modern sensitivities. . . . Irving is among the few novelists who can write a novel about grief and fill it with ribald humor soaked in irony.”—USA Today
In A Widow for One Year, we follow Ruth Cole through three of the most pivotal times in her life: from her girlhood on Long Island (in the summer of 1958) through the fall of 1990 (when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career), and at last in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother (and she’s about to fall in love for the first time). Both elegiac and sensual, A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force.
Praise for A Widow for One Year
“Compelling . . . By turns antic and moving, lusty and tragic, A Widow for One Year is bursting with memorable moments. . . . A testament to one of life’s most difficult lessons: In the end, you just have to find a way to keep going.”San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

“A sprawling 19th-century production, chock full of bizarre coincidences, multiple plot lines, lengthy digressions, and stories within stories. . . . An engaging and often affecting fable, a fairy tale that manages to be old-fashioned and modern all at once.”The New York Times

“[Irving’s] characters can beguile us onto thin ice and persuade us to dance there. His instinctive mark is the moral choice stripped bare, and his aim is impressive. What’s more, there’s hardly a writer alive who can match his control of the omniscient point of view.”The Washington Post Book World
“In the sprawling, deeply felt A Widow for One Year, John Irving has delivered his best novel since The World According to Garp. . . . Like a warm bath, it’s a great pleasure to immerse yourself in.”Entertainment Weekly
“John Irving is arguably the American Balzac, or perhaps our Dickens—a rip-roaring storyteller whose intricate plot machinery is propelled by good old-fashioned greed, foolishness and passion.”The Nation

“Powerful . . . a masterpiece.”St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
… (more)
Member:Jaie22
Title:A Widow for One Year: A Novel
Authors:John Irving
Info:Random House (1998), Edition: 1st trade ed, Hardcover, 537 pages
Collections:Wishlist, To read
Rating:
Tags:black, owned, fiction, yellow

Work Information

A Widow for One Year by John Irving (1998)

Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

Group TopicMessagesLast Message 
 Name that Book: Takes place in Amsterdam4 unread / 4perennialreader, February 2013

» See also 154 mentions

English (89)  Catalan (4)  German (4)  Dutch (4)  Spanish (3)  Italian (2)  French (2)  Finnish (1)  All languages (109)
Showing 1-5 of 89 (next | show all)
As I started writing this review, I had not finished reading this book. I was on page 322, just over 200 to go. No widow had appeared. Fascinating. I'm sure eventually the widow subplot will appear and will make perfect sense. Irving is just too good a writer to have a book title that is totally unconnected to the book. Several years ago I saw a movie called The Door in the Floor. I knew it was based on a book by John Irving. I did not realize it was this book. As a racquetball player, I had been in many courts where the placement of the door was not obvious, so the movie's title made sense. It was a stretch but that fit with John Irving. After I finish this book, I'm going to rewatch the movie. My guess is that the widow subplot was not included in the movie and they needed to come up with a different title. Stay tuned.... OK. The Widow For One Year has finally appeared at p 467. Only another 75 pages left, so I'm guessing we'll have several subplots resolved, including the widow subplot.

I finished the book and can now say the widow subplot felt like what in sports is called a head fake. A slight movement of the head to mislead the person who was focused on what might happen next. In the book, the central character does become a widow and is only a widow for a year. So it does happen, but it is almost totally unrelated to everything else. Like many of Irving's subplots, it keeps the reader interested, in this case, wondering, where's the widow, since it happens so late in the book. Not a central focus, just a detail. What is clear is why the movie needed a different title. One of the many subplots that never made it in to the screenplay.

In the first part of the book, it's unclear who the major character is going to be. There's a husband and wife who can easily become the central character, but both seem to be less than stellar people. There is a four-year-old, but she seems to just be there rather than the central focus. The initial part of the book ends with the wife leaving her husband, understandably, but also abandoning the lovely four-year-old. That departure is dramatic, and what increases its importance is that the book takes a break. The movie wraps up with an event, the husband's suicide, that occurs much later in the book. It is only with the passage of thirty-seven years, totally skipped over in the book, do we learn no one has heard from the missing wife and mother, and it's clear now the four-year-old has become the central character. The movie essentially ends with the immediate results from the mother's departure. Fortunately, the book has a lot more. The movie was good but a bit of a downer. The book allows us to have hope.

The one constant in both the first part and the rest of the book is sex. It's everywhere. While Irving avoids spending much time describing physical sexual acts, he keeps the topic front and center by people thinking about sex, talking about it, anticipating it, describing it, remembering it and even prostitutes, offering sex. There are also pornographic paintings and photographs. There's more sex here than in most Irving's books. There's a reason the movie has an R rating, and it never even gets to Amsterdam. At some points, the movie tried to minimize the sex while the book has no such problem. The bra featured in the movie seems more like underwear while in the book it was sexier. Another constant here is writing and writers. Everyone's a writer, the husband, eventually the wife and daughter, her friend, her editor and the young man who the husband has brought into their lives, hoping the young man will be attracted to the wife. The young man eventually becomes the through line for the story, spanning the first part and the later events. He's more narrator than central character. And there's a sport which everyone plays. This time it's squash rather than wrestling. More importantly, there's the Irving theme of a missing parent. How does it impact the four-year-old? She is always wondering why she was left behind and whether she will ever see her mother again. She claims to love her father even though much of what we see of him feels unlovable and even blameworthy. And another Irving feature is prominent here, the tragic accident that changes people's lives. Here there was a car crash that killed brothers before the story starts. The mother's inability to deal with the loss of her beloved sons sets everything in motion.

I highly recommend the book. It's so rich it's understandable why the movie just scratches the surface. ( )
  Ed_Schneider | Jan 6, 2024 |
While I wasn't wild about the reader, the story still gripped. Irving does amazing things w/ different plot lines and multiple characters. ( )
  rebwaring | Aug 14, 2023 |
In a nutshell: a book by a writer, about writers who write about writers.

Or:




Of John Irving's books, this is definitely a solid midlister.

Despite my snark, I did enjoy it. ( )
  beckyrenner | Aug 3, 2023 |
Not read. As of June 2023!
  njkost | Jun 14, 2023 |
A WIDOW is way overlong and repetitive in plot, settings. and characters.

Oddly for the author of GARP, the characters and plot barely evolve and there
are no real surprises except for the police husband.

The ending is ridiculous. ( )
  m.belljackson | Aug 28, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 89 (next | show all)
Mit seinem neuen Roman "A Widow for One Year" steigt John Irving aus den literarischen Tiefen, die er mit "A Son of the Circus" erreicht hatte, wieder hervor. Verloren sich in letzterem die Charaktere und Handlungsstränge in einem Erzählwust, der den locker-beschwingten Erzählgestus Irvings vermissen ließ, so findet Irving mit seinem neuen Roman zu alter Souveränität zurück.
 

» Add other authors (22 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
John Irvingprimary authorall editionscalculated
Commandeur, SjaakTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Guidall, GeorgeNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

Belongs to Publisher Series

detebe (23300)
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
"... as for this little lady,
the best thing I can wish her is
a little misfortune."
--William Makepeace Thackeray
Dedication
For Janet,
a love story
First words
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 coming from her parents' bedroom.
Quotations
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (1)

Fiction. Literature. Romance. HTML:A Widow For One Year will appeal to readers  who like old-fashioned storytelling mixed with modern sensitivities. . . . Irving is among the few novelists who can write a novel about grief and fill it with ribald humor soaked in irony.”—USA Today
In A Widow for One Year, we follow Ruth Cole through three of the most pivotal times in her life: from her girlhood on Long Island (in the summer of 1958) through the fall of 1990 (when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career), and at last in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother (and she’s about to fall in love for the first time). Both elegiac and sensual, A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force.
Praise for A Widow for One Year
“Compelling . . . By turns antic and moving, lusty and tragic, A Widow for One Year is bursting with memorable moments. . . . A testament to one of life’s most difficult lessons: In the end, you just have to find a way to keep going.”San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

“A sprawling 19th-century production, chock full of bizarre coincidences, multiple plot lines, lengthy digressions, and stories within stories. . . . An engaging and often affecting fable, a fairy tale that manages to be old-fashioned and modern all at once.”The New York Times

“[Irving’s] characters can beguile us onto thin ice and persuade us to dance there. His instinctive mark is the moral choice stripped bare, and his aim is impressive. What’s more, there’s hardly a writer alive who can match his control of the omniscient point of view.”The Washington Post Book World
“In the sprawling, deeply felt A Widow for One Year, John Irving has delivered his best novel since The World According to Garp. . . . Like a warm bath, it’s a great pleasure to immerse yourself in.”Entertainment Weekly
“John Irving is arguably the American Balzac, or perhaps our Dickens—a rip-roaring storyteller whose intricate plot machinery is propelled by good old-fashioned greed, foolishness and passion.”The Nation

“Powerful . . . a masterpiece.”St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.69)
0.5 5
1 38
1.5 9
2 126
2.5 28
3 505
3.5 125
4 714
4.5 75
5 361

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,239,833 books! | Top bar: Always visible