Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
I don't normally give 5-star ratings to anything because I think that they feel unrealistic and fake. But this is one the few books that anything less than 5-star would not have done justice to.
One line on the back-cover blurb caught my attention the first time I picked up this book, "... a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief". Being someone who knows what the relentlessness of grief feels like, how is overshadows everything before and after it, I felt like this book would speak to my soul. And it did not disappoint.
This is a wonderful book. And my only regret is that I did not read it sooner. Because in this book I finally found a friend. A friend who understood how the relentless grief is even with the passage of time.
Thank you, John Irving, for this friend.
One line on the back-cover blurb caught my attention the first time I picked up this book, "... a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief". Being someone who knows what the relentlessness of grief feels like, how is overshadows everything before and after it, I felt like this book would speak to my soul. And it did not disappoint.
This is a wonderful book. And my only regret is that I did not read it sooner. Because in this book I finally found a friend. A friend who understood how the relentless grief is even with the passage of time.
Thank you, John Irving, for this friend.
My book club liked it but I did not. I am tired of Irving always having the same quirky concepts.
Writers Writing About Writers Writing
Ruth thought of a novel as a great, untidy house, a disorderly mansion; her job was to make the place fit to live in, to give it at least the semblance of order. Only when she wrote was she unafraid.
How many writers in one book are too many writers? Read A Widow for One Year by John Irving to find out. Jokes aside, I really do enjoy books about authors, books about everything related to books. I generally find them charming. But, almost every main character in this book is a writer. The one character that wasn’t a writer was a journalist. A print journalist. It all got a little too much for me.
The premise of this book sounded right up my alley. A Widow For One Year tells the story of Ruth Cole, a critically-acclaimed and popular fiction writer and picks up at important moments in her life. The first time is when she is four and walks in on her mother having sex with her father’s writing assistant. The second is when she is 36 and witnesses an event she should not have while on tour for her third book. Finally, the third time that the story picks up is when Ruth has just lost her husband. A story that chronicles the life story of a woman and writer sounds like a definite hit in my books. But this is where Irving’s writing came into play.
Everyone has read those memes about how male characters take extra measures to ensure that the readers get an uncomfortable amount of details about the female character's appearance, right? Well, Irving is guilty of doing just that. At first it is forgivable as we are introduced to Marion Cole (also a writer), Ruth’s mother who never recovers from the death of her two teenage sons, through the eyes of the teenaged boy, Eddie (also a writer), in love with her. In-depth descriptions of her beauty, sex appeal and body though out of place, are understandable.
But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.
But then the post-Marion scenes somehow become worse. The sheer number of times that Irving reiterates that Ruth has ‘great breasts’ goes from being funny to being downright annoying really quick. So much so that there is an entire scene dedicated to Ruth complaining about the fact that there is a man staring at her breasts. The scene is three pages long. Nothing of any importance happens during those three pages.
Rom-coms have introduced modern audiences to the character of the best friend. The supportive, bitchy, witty and dependable foil to the main character, often introduced for some forced diversity. Irving uses this stereotype to give us Hannah (a journalist) Ruth’s best friend, or at least that’s what we are told even though nothing about the way Ruth talks about Hannah would hint at them being friends. From slut-shaming to jealousy, Irving does everything to make the relationship between Ruth and Hannah everything but friendly.
The only redeemable qualities about this book, in my opinion, are the comic scenes. The gardener and the mistress dealing with Ruth’s father Ted Cole (also a writer) scenes, in the beginning, Eddie’s attempts to make it for the book reading on time and Ruth’s encounter with a man she absolutely did not have an affair with were great scenes. Irving writes some really interesting things about autobiographical writing, dealing with grief and the use of the semicolon in modern English. The manner in which the different stories by the various writers in the book are interspersed with the original story is done exceptionally well.
The first quarter of the book is actually a pretty good read and I could understand why Irving’s writing is praised so often but then the latter part of the book just kept going downhill. All the characters do completely unforgivable things that make the readers dislike them, they find themselves in horrible situations where they make the worst decisions and they have particularly strange definitions of ‘love’. It is surprising that there is so much I have to complain about a book that in theory seems like five-star read for me.
There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments.
Ruth thought of a novel as a great, untidy house, a disorderly mansion; her job was to make the place fit to live in, to give it at least the semblance of order. Only when she wrote was she unafraid.
How many writers in one book are too many writers? Read A Widow for One Year by John Irving to find out. Jokes aside, I really do enjoy books about authors, books about everything related to books. I generally find them charming. But, almost every main character in this book is a writer. The one character that wasn’t a writer was a journalist. A print journalist. It all got a little too much for me.
The premise of this book sounded right up my alley. A Widow For One Year tells the story of Ruth Cole, a critically-acclaimed and popular fiction writer and picks up at important moments in her life. The first time is when she is four and walks in on her mother having sex with her father’s writing assistant. The second is when she is 36 and witnesses an event she should not have while on tour for her third book. Finally, the third time that the story picks up is when Ruth has just lost her husband. A story that chronicles the life story of a woman and writer sounds like a definite hit in my books. But this is where Irving’s writing came into play.
Everyone has read those memes about how male characters take extra measures to ensure that the readers get an uncomfortable amount of details about the female character's appearance, right? Well, Irving is guilty of doing just that. At first it is forgivable as we are introduced to Marion Cole (also a writer), Ruth’s mother who never recovers from the death of her two teenage sons, through the eyes of the teenaged boy, Eddie (also a writer), in love with her. In-depth descriptions of her beauty, sex appeal and body though out of place, are understandable.
But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.
But then the post-Marion scenes somehow become worse. The sheer number of times that Irving reiterates that Ruth has ‘great breasts’ goes from being funny to being downright annoying really quick. So much so that there is an entire scene dedicated to Ruth complaining about the fact that there is a man staring at her breasts. The scene is three pages long. Nothing of any importance happens during those three pages.
Rom-coms have introduced modern audiences to the character of the best friend. The supportive, bitchy, witty and dependable foil to the main character, often introduced for some forced diversity. Irving uses this stereotype to give us Hannah (a journalist) Ruth’s best friend, or at least that’s what we are told even though nothing about the way Ruth talks about Hannah would hint at them being friends. From slut-shaming to jealousy, Irving does everything to make the relationship between Ruth and Hannah everything but friendly.
The only redeemable qualities about this book, in my opinion, are the comic scenes. The gardener and the mistress dealing with Ruth’s father Ted Cole (also a writer) scenes, in the beginning, Eddie’s attempts to make it for the book reading on time and Ruth’s encounter with a man she absolutely did not have an affair with were great scenes. Irving writes some really interesting things about autobiographical writing, dealing with grief and the use of the semicolon in modern English. The manner in which the different stories by the various writers in the book are interspersed with the original story is done exceptionally well.
The first quarter of the book is actually a pretty good read and I could understand why Irving’s writing is praised so often but then the latter part of the book just kept going downhill. All the characters do completely unforgivable things that make the readers dislike them, they find themselves in horrible situations where they make the worst decisions and they have particularly strange definitions of ‘love’. It is surprising that there is so much I have to complain about a book that in theory seems like five-star read for me.
There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments.
Such a fun book! I really loved the characters in this book, even if they weren't always likable people.
I'd forgotten how much I absolutely adore this book. This may be my favorite, but Garp and Owen Meany are also hard to beat. Such a fantastic story. Loved it!
I love how all of the characters were writers... there was irony in that they all thought their way of writing was best, but in the end the novelist who prides herself on invention and not just "writing what she knows" ends up using her fiction as a way to enhance her own life and give herself the courage to explore things she otherwise wouldn't have. No spoilers, I swear, but the book ends on a really interesting "full circle" moment and I love it when books do that.
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I violently hated this novel in its first 300 or so pages and only came to tolerate (and even mildly like) the story as it wrapped up its final threads. I state this at the very beginning in order to establish that I am emphatically not the target audience for this novel, but it doesn't mean that John Irving's brand of fiction will not work for you. My sister is an Irving fan, and she was the one who convinced me to give him a try. However, the novel that she likes (Hotel New Hampshire) apparently has sad stuff in it so I tried this one instead.
A Widow for One Year follows novelist Ruth Cole during three seminal periods of her life, from a summer in 1958 with her mother's affair and subsequent disappearance that unmoored her as a five-year old, a trip to Amsterdam decades later when she becomes witness to a crime, to her life as a widow and mother years later. Revolving around her is a solar system of characters that often interact with chaotic results. These include Ted Cole, philandering father and successful children's lit author, Eddie O'Hare, mediocre novelist who lives his entire adult life in love with Ruth's absent mother Marion, and a well-read Dutch cop who ends up falling in love with Ruth.
Literally every other character in this story is a white upper middle class novelist, with various degrees of successes. They all "summer" in the Hamptons. They play squash in between bouts of lovingly depicted infidelity. Two characters reunite during a book reading at the 92nd St. Y. Ruth does research for her next novel by exploring the sex trade in Amsterdam. There are so many barf-worthy affectations that I've wondered whether the entire novel is a highly opaque parody of soft-spoken, public radio-supporting, well-traveled East Coast intelligentsia and Irving is just waiting for everyone to notice. My reaction as I flipped pages can be summed by an animated gif of Judy Garland gaily singing "I don't caaaare."
Embedded into dubious plot points are instances of clear-eyed and beautifully rendered imagery, including the multiple photographs of Marion and Ted's deceased sons, brothers that a young Ruth never met. The novelistic pastiches are also credible, particularly the excerpts from Ted's creepy children's stories. The least convincing ones come from Marion's detective novel (of course), which is characterized as commercial fiction but is much too inert and ponderous to be one.
The most interesting character ended up being the Dutch cop that became entangled with Ruth through a series of highly spoilery events. It probably helps that he is parachuted into the slow-motion train crash of Ruth's familial relationships and he functions as someone who grounds her through all the chaos.
Speaking of trainwrecks, a lot of pages were used to talk about Eddie O'Hare's sad and ineffectual life. I want to get back the hours of my life reading those pages. I understand that Eddie is depicted as an inherently buffoonish figure, but I also resented how the narrative is trying to make me sympathetic towards him from the moment he becomes attracted to Marion as a teenager up until he decides to transfer his capped affections towards an adult Ruth. Gross.
This novel is a mess, sure, but messy novels aren't usually a dealbreaker for me. However, A Widow for One Year is an unwieldy collection of tropes that left me aggressively apathetic. Maybe this brand of narrative irony just isn't for me.
A Widow for One Year follows novelist Ruth Cole during three seminal periods of her life, from a summer in 1958 with her mother's affair and subsequent disappearance that unmoored her as a five-year old, a trip to Amsterdam decades later when she becomes witness to a crime, to her life as a widow and mother years later. Revolving around her is a solar system of characters that often interact with chaotic results. These include Ted Cole, philandering father and successful children's lit author, Eddie O'Hare, mediocre novelist who lives his entire adult life in love with Ruth's absent mother Marion, and a well-read Dutch cop who ends up falling in love with Ruth.
Literally every other character in this story is a white upper middle class novelist, with various degrees of successes. They all "summer" in the Hamptons. They play squash in between bouts of lovingly depicted infidelity. Two characters reunite during a book reading at the 92nd St. Y. Ruth does research for her next novel by exploring the sex trade in Amsterdam. There are so many barf-worthy affectations that I've wondered whether the entire novel is a highly opaque parody of soft-spoken, public radio-supporting, well-traveled East Coast intelligentsia and Irving is just waiting for everyone to notice. My reaction as I flipped pages can be summed by an animated gif of Judy Garland gaily singing "I don't caaaare."
Embedded into dubious plot points are instances of clear-eyed and beautifully rendered imagery, including the multiple photographs of Marion and Ted's deceased sons, brothers that a young Ruth never met. The novelistic pastiches are also credible, particularly the excerpts from Ted's creepy children's stories. The least convincing ones come from Marion's detective novel (of course), which is characterized as commercial fiction but is much too inert and ponderous to be one.
The most interesting character ended up being the Dutch cop that became entangled with Ruth through a series of highly spoilery events. It probably helps that he is parachuted into the slow-motion train crash of Ruth's familial relationships and he functions as someone who grounds her through all the chaos.
Speaking of trainwrecks, a lot of pages were used to talk about Eddie O'Hare's sad and ineffectual life. I want to get back the hours of my life reading those pages. I understand that Eddie is depicted as an inherently buffoonish figure, but I also resented how the narrative is trying to make me sympathetic towards him from the moment he becomes attracted to Marion as a teenager up until he decides to transfer his capped affections towards an adult Ruth. Gross.
This novel is a mess, sure, but messy novels aren't usually a dealbreaker for me. However, A Widow for One Year is an unwieldy collection of tropes that left me aggressively apathetic. Maybe this brand of narrative irony just isn't for me.
Some of this book I really liked, but other parts dissappointed me. The novel's shifting nature is a little disconcerting, but Irving's blatantly irreverent treatment of his characters' private matters make the book a worthwhile read.