Ein Frauenleben : Ich lese gerne Krimis, ich lese auch mal Liebesromane, ich mag heitere Geschichten, ich liebe besonders skurrile Stories - all das findet man bei John Irving in einem Roman! Besonders in diesem, der sogar von Elke Heidenreich empfohlen wurde, obwohl die sonst keine Bestseller Autoren vorstellt in ihrer Sendung. Es ist ein Roman für alle Irving-Fans, weil auch vertraute Handlungen vorkommen. Auf jeden Fall wird hier wieder ein pralles Leben beschrieben und man erhält Einsichten in die Arbeit eines Autors. Besonders gelungen fand ich, wenn die Hauptfigur Ruth Cole als eigene Romanfigur fungierte. Im Gegensatz zu vielen Rezensenten konnte ich keine Langatmigkeit feststellen. Nein, ich meine entweder man mag John Irivings Erzählweise und schwelgt, oder man versteht ihn nicht und seine Figuren und liest dann besser "einfache Kost". Nicht Jeder mag Skurriles!

I picked this up because I liked the movie A Door in the Floor, and I ended up hating it. ( )

I picked this up because I liked the movie A Door in the Floor, and I ended up hating it. ( )

I picked this up because I liked the movie A Door in the Floor, and I ended up hating it. ( )

Stories within a story ... this is really what this book amounts to. It's like getting a little surprise treat every once in a while along the way.

There's a house on Long Island where every room is filled with framed photographs of 2 boys long dead. A little girl of 4 grows up in the house surrounded by photos of her dead brothers whom she knows only through stories told around each photograph. Ted, the father, is a writer of 3 not very successful novels and successful children's books. He also has a penchant for drinking, playing squash and seducing women, preferably unhappily married younger women. Marion, the mother, is vague and distant after the loss of her sons. Ruth is their 4 year old daughter, conceived as an intended replacement for the sons they had lost. Marion and Ted decide to separate amicably, live in 2 houses and take alternate days and nights with Ruth at the main house.

Eddie O'Hare, a 16 year old, enters into this family, ostensibly as an intern to Ted, who lose his license as a result of multiple DUI charges and needs someone to drive him. Eddie thinks he's there to learn how to be a writer. Eddie ends up having a love affair with Marion.

And that's the start where our 4 main characters are introduced. From that point on, their lives start to unravel before us, Marion leaves Ted and Ruth and disappears for most of the rest of the book. We leave Ruth at 4 on the day her mother disappears and pick her up again when she's now a successful writer in her 20s.

Sounds simple but it's not. There's almost every emotion brought forth in this book. Anger, sadness, elation and humor. There are a few really funny moments in this story, Mrs Vaughn and the gardener over the drawings, Ted and the squid ink ice cubes, Eddie and 'sixty times' and even Ruth in Amsterdam's red light district.

While the story unfolds around the lives of our 4 main characters, all of whom are or become writers themselves, there are little side stories that seamlessly emerge about some of the people they come in contact with. The seamlessness with which these side stories slide into the main characters lives done with great skill. And if you don't think that's hard enough to do, we're also treated to the actual children's stories that Ted wrote, chapters of the novels written by Ruth, bits of Eddie's novels and later parts of Marion's books.

This book reminded me of a kaleidoscope, you're dazzled by the patterns and colors when you look into the eye-piece, but a slight movement of the wrist, and a new and different brightly lit picture appears before you. More twists bring more new dazzling patterns and you can't get enough of them. This is what this book was like for me. Every few pages introduced me to new pictures and new stories. I couldn't get enough of them.

I especially wish Ted Cole's children's illustrated books were real so I could buy and keep them for myself....they sound a bit like Lemony Snicket stories. ( )