A review by emilybeaudry
A Widow for One Year by John Irving

2.0

I was so happy to finish this book...not because the ending was any good, but just because I can finally be done reading it! Although Irving peppers this book with a few nuggets of insight and even an interesting story line here and there, this book is nothing but a disjointed mess. It's almost as if he collected all of his notes from over the years, mashed them together, made loose connections, and called it a novel.

Not even remotely worth the ridiculous amount of time it took me to get through this novel. Looking forward to whatever I read next - no matter how bad it is, it couldn't be much worse than this.

UPDATED REVIEW: You know what, I'll toss another one star onto my review because I've had some time to be away from this book and ponder its point. I think it was about how people are affected by the absence of something or someone in their life. I don't think Irving did a very good job of explaining this, but I think that's what he was getting at. I actually blame the editors at this point. In any case, don't even bother, it was pretty bad.