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A review by rageofachilles
A Widow for One Year by John Irving
4.0
Out of all the John Irving books I've read so far, I would place this book behind Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meaning. It is still a riveting read, but Irving, in my opinion, is one of the best living American novelists, and a really good novel can still be dwarfed by his other works.
This book is mainly a book about authors and the novel writing process. It seems like every character ends up being an author, and Irving shows how "imagining stuff up" can be extremely hard for novelists as every author-character dips into the well of his or her own experience to write.
A lot of things happen in A Widow for One Year, but Cider House Rules and Owen Meaning are more closely unified around a single main idea that drives the force of the novel (CHR=Abortion OM=Religion).
If you are looking at diving into Irving, I would start with Cider House Rules and/or Owen Meaning. I haven't read The World According to Garp, which I hear is great, but A Window of One Year is a good novel to read after starting somewhere else in Irving's corpus.
This book is mainly a book about authors and the novel writing process. It seems like every character ends up being an author, and Irving shows how "imagining stuff up" can be extremely hard for novelists as every author-character dips into the well of his or her own experience to write.
A lot of things happen in A Widow for One Year, but Cider House Rules and Owen Meaning are more closely unified around a single main idea that drives the force of the novel (CHR=Abortion OM=Religion).
If you are looking at diving into Irving, I would start with Cider House Rules and/or Owen Meaning. I haven't read The World According to Garp, which I hear is great, but A Window of One Year is a good novel to read after starting somewhere else in Irving's corpus.