A Widow for One Year: A Novel

Written by John Irving

Narrated by George Guidall

Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character--a "difficult" woman.  By no means is she conventionally "nice," but she will never be forgotten.

Ruth's story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life.  When we first meet her--on Long Island, in the summer of 1958--Ruth is only four.

The second window into Ruth's life opens in the fall of 1990, when Ruth is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career.  She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason.

A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother.  She's about to fall in love for the first time.

Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force.  Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 12, 2005
• ISBN: 9780739320921

John Irving

John Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning in 1980 for the novel The World According to Garp. In 1992, Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He won the 2000 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Irving's most recent novel is In One Person (2012).

Reviews for A Widow for One Year

[vdt_melbourne · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Stupid rape scene that is unnecessary and doesn’t flow with the story.

[keebrook · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

the book really should be two books. the first part, when the central character Ruth is a child, is very different from the rest of the book. it is engaging and the pace is constant with a definite story arc. the latter two thirds of the book languish in the aftermath of the first part and never really recover. a lot of other reviewers found this book to be boring and two-dimensional. it does have some problems but i didn’t find it to be two-dimensional.

i like Irving’s prose and what he’s saying but at times i felt that the first part represented little more than a teenage boy’s fantasy. and maybe even an older woman’s, too. whichever, it certainly provoked questions and induced pondering about grief, pain, morality, relationships, and taboos related to those ideas. Irving can be very good at presenting a quirky cast with borderline dysfunctional interpersonal dynamics that really expose what most “nice, normal” families really are. if one tilts the head and squints just a bit, Irving can be seen as a mix of Chuck Palahniuk and Wes Anderson.

the other books i’ve read of Irving’s are near-adventures at several points whereas this one provides such ideas only in the background or on the periphery with descriptions of the stories the father has written or the references to the death of Thomas and Timothy, Ted and Marion’s sons. most of the rest of the goings-on are pretty sedate or, at least, ordinary.

the second part of the book picks up 32 years later. wow. that’s probably the biggest jump in time i’ve seen in a book with the same characters. that is, i’ve known stories to jump thousands of years but they continue with other people and cultures. this one focuses right in on the intriguing relationship between people who met briefly but intensely when they were much younger, one of which -Ruth- was only 4 years old. Irving spend some time talking about how certain pieces of one character’s writing didn’t ring true while other parts did due to on-again, off-again autobiographical injections. he might be succumbing to this very malady in his own writing.

this latter part, as i said, is really a different book. this could have been the main book with the first part being a flashback anecdote embedded within. instead, we get to see the childhood and then adulthood in chronological order but skipping over a fair bit in the middle. important to do it this way? i’m not sure but i found the pacing to be inconsistent and the storytelling a bit too self-reflective because he’s writing about writers writing about writing much of the time and then seems to demonstrate what he just wrote about by writing it out with the characters.

the final act is more motivated but over long in arriving. even so, the book did seem to stew over itself just a bit too much and i simply didn’t believe some of what happened or the way characters reacted to that. for instance, Ruth witnesses a very traumatic event. her reaction is very matter-of-fact. Irving failed to convey the emotional intensity and consequences of seeing something like that. another example is that characters, in general, pine over situations that happened more than 30 years previously. not that people don’t ruminate over significant life events for their entire lives but Irving doesn’t provide enough foundation for these people to behave the way they do. i’ve lived enough life to know that family breaks can be devastating, affecting your life deeply and irrevocably but you do end up having a life and moving on. i simply didn’t see this in the characters he wrote. perhaps some of the other reviewers were right about the two-dimensionality but wrong to place it on the whole book- it was the characters that were flat, not the story.

the first part of the book was compelling, substantive, believable, and satisfying. after that, the book sinks a bit too much into its own meandering reverie. there were parts when i could almost see Irving typing and typing and typing not knowing where the story was going to go so he just kept typing until AHA! he came up with something else to do with the plot! the movie that was made from this book The Door in the Floor, understood this and completely dropped the latter parts. so, the book was somewhat too long and rambling but was still a nice read.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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.

[donhazelwood · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is not the same as The World According to Garp or Cider House Rules. Those were both great books. This is definitely a John Irving book, very unforgettable well developed characters. The story however, just lays flat ... a very linear plot with nothing to resolve. Just a semi-interesting story about a family who also happen to all be writers.

[ken5me5old5mate · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A Widow for One Year: A Novel by John Irving I've given this extraordinary book 5 Stars because it is really 3 (or more) books in one and it held my interest through all of its 24 odd hours of listening.As usual I won't summarise it, you can read that stuff anywhere. What I will tell you is about the characters, they were so real that the guy reading it reminded me of the father, who was pretty obnoxious, and I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't the father who was reading the book even though I knew this was exactly how the father would sound.This is a long story (the book is 576 pages) but it weaves and wobbles its way through several lives and characters from the books within this book occasionally appear too.I learned something about driving so fundamental that I had never heard nor been taught it until I came across it here.This is also the guy that wrote The World According to Garp and Ciderhouse Rules and A Prayer For Owen Meany.I also came across him saying that he always wrote the last sentence first then worked his way back to the beginning and by the time he got to the front it was like remembering something that had already happened.Great book.

[starbox_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I first read a John Irving book many years ago when my brother told me I must read 'Garp'. This is the third book of his I've read and it really is quite something. As always, his characters are real people doing believable stuff- and yet there's kind of a heightened colour and brightness to every page- you're completely caught up in the tale.
The first third is perhaps the strongest (I see that that section was made into a movie - "The Floor in the Door.") 16 year old Eddie O'Hare, an aspiring writer, goes to spend the summer as a kind of assistant to children's author Ted Cole. He finds a dysfunctional household; the death in a car crash of both the couple's teen sons a few years ago has left the beautiful wife emotionally traumatized. The 4 year old daughter they subsequently had has NOT replaced the boys. The house is hung with photos of them; Ted loses himself in endless affairs and squash games, Eddie falls in love with the beresaved Marian. And then she leaves the family, with no forwarding address...
In section 2, we revisit the daughter, Ruth, now in her 30s and a successful author herself. And then again, a few years on, in the final part.
It's terribly clever writing as themes are re-introduced (like a piece of music) and ...although the brothels of Amsterdam (and the squash games!) go on a tad, it sure was a good read!

[Marianae · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The first part of the book is fantastic. Very entertaining and easy to read. (Translated from Spanish)

[Antonio Cuervo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book talks about writers but still explores other themes, making the story very good. (Translated from Spanish)

[alisony-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was my first John Irving novel, and whilst I strongly suspect he's another Marmite kind of author in the realm of Jonathan Franzen (at least for this book), personally I've found a new favourite author.

It's no doubt terribly maudlin of me, but I just can't resist a dysfunctional family saga. A Widow for One Year begins with a couple in The Hamptons whose teenage boys had been killed in an accident five years earlier, and as the novel unfolds and time moves on it examines the ripple effect of that tragedy on the couple, their young daughter and some other key players who come into contact with the family.

Despite the backdrop of the family tragedy, this is not a depressive book. There is a lot of black comedy woven throughout the book, with strong characters and an intricate plot. Perhaps at times it wandered a little bit, so for that I'm dropping half a star, but in all a read I enjoyed very much.

4.5 stars - a rollicking good read.

[wassilissa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jahre, nachdem ich das Buch gelesen habe, habe ich nun das Hörbuch gehört. Und ich bin sehr froh darum! Das Buch hatte mir nämlich nicht besonders gefallen. Das von Rufus Beck genial gelesene Hörbuch allerdings hat mir gezeigt, dass es doch ein „echter Irving“ ist, in dem Figuren, Motive und Handlungsstränge schlussendlich ein harmonisches Ganzes ergeben. Man kann dem Buch auf jeden Fall den Vorwurf machen, dass es zu konstruiert und künstlich ist. Die Personen entwickeln sich kaum, lediglich Ruth macht eine gewisse Veränderung durch. Natürlich ist es unrealistisch, dass Personen so statisch sind, jahrzehntelang an einer alten Liebe festhängen. V.a. die Nebenfiguren sind nicht unbedingt nur gut gelungen. Hannah ist beispielsweise eine recht simple Figur, was ich sehr schade finde.
Und trotzdem – die Geschichte selbst ist eine runde Sache. Viele, viele Handlungsstränge, Parallelmotive und Geschichten passen zusammen und ergeben ein komplettes Bild. Und auch die Botschaft, die ich mitnehme, gefällt mir: Wir können Trennungen und Verluste ganz unterschiedlich bewältigen. Das Leben macht das, was es am besten kann: Es geht weiter. Und trotz unserer Trauer, die immer ein Teil von uns sein wird, wird es möglich sein, wieder ins Leben zu gehen, vielleicht auch wieder zu lieben: Sei es nach einem oder nach 37 Jahren.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of his best. Great characters driving the plot. Even though the plot might have been unbelievable in places, the characters made you believe. Hard to explain, but the book just made me feel good. Ruth was a wonderful, strong, likable, complex character that you had to root for!

[tangotango-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

John Irving ist wahrscheinlich den meisten ein Begriff als Autor der Vorlage zu den Filmen Hotel New Hampshire und Gottes Werk und Teufels Beitrag. Ich hab von ihm vor Jahren mal "The Fourth Hand" gelesen, was ich ziemlich unterhaltsam fand (zumindest die erste Hälfte).

Dieses Buch handelt von dem 16jährigen Eddie O'Hare, Professorensohn, der als Ferienjob als "Schriftstellerassistent" den Sommer 1958 auf Long Island bei der Familie Cole verbringt: Mutter Marion und Kinderbuchschriftsteller Ted Cole, die vor fünf Jahren ihre halbwüchsigen Söhne bei einem Autounfall verloren haben, und ihre vierjährige Tochter Ruth.
Eddie erlebt eine sehr intensive sexuelle Initiation mit Marion, die sich im Verlauf des Sommers für immer von Mann und Kind trennt.

Danach werden die nächsten Jahrzehnte der Protagonisten erzählt:
Ted Cole schreibt immer weniger und kultiviert eigentlich nur noch seine Affären mit verheirateten Frauen und sein Squash-Spiel, Ruth wird erwachsen, studiert und wird ebenfalls Schriftstellerin, Eddie versucht sich ebenfalls als Schriftsteller, hat aber als einziges immerwährendes Thema "ältere Frau-jüngerer Mann", Marion bleibt abwesend, aber immer in Eddies Gedanken.

Was mir am Buch gefallen hat, sind die Gegensätze zwischen Entwicklung einiger Personen (wie Ruth) und bis zur Unbeweglichkeit versteinerter Verhaltensmuster wie bei Eddie, Marion und Ted, zwischen den teils tragischen Schicksalsmomenten und der beschreibenden, fast herzlosen Sprache.
Außerdem die lockere Erzählweise, die vielleicht amerikanisch, vielleicht nur Irving-spezifisch ist, mit einem Schuss Humor und ziemlich trocken, gleichzeitig die Öffnung der Erzählung und der Figuren gegenüber der restlichen Welt (es geht zum Beispiel um Lesereisen nach Deutschland und Holland).
Lustig fand ich auch, dass John Irving indirekt (über einen der fiktiven Autoren) Bezug nimmt auf seine - reale - Teilnahme an dem internationalen Schriftstellerprojekt der Süddeuschen Zeitung (Magazin) "Die blaurote Luftmatratze" (irgendwann in den 90er Jahren).

Zitat:
Eddie dachte an Mrs. Bascoms Wohnung an der Ecke 5th Avenue und 93rd Street, an die vielen Fotos, die sie als Kind, als junges Mädchen, als junge Braut, als junge Mutter, als nicht mehr so junge Braut (sie hatte dreimal geheiratet) und als jugendlich wirkende Großmutter zeigen. Eddie konnnte sie nicht ansehen, ohne sie sich in allen Phasen ihres langen Lebens vorzustellen.
"Ich versuche, die ganze Frau zu sehen", sagte er zu Hannah. "Natürlich sehe ich, dass sie alt ist, aber es gibt Fotos. Und wenn nicht, kann ich mir das Leben einer Frau entsprechend vorstellen. Das ganze Leben, meine ich. Ich kann mir vorstellen, wie sie ausgesehen hat, als sie deutlich jünger war als ich, weil es immer Gesten und Gesichtszüge gibt, die sich eingeprägt haben, unabhängig vom Alter. Eine alte Frau betrachtet sich selbst nicht immer als alte Frau, und ich tue es auch nicht. Wenn ich sie ansehe, versuche ich, ihr ganzes Leben zu sehen. Und das ist etwas sehr Anrührendes."

Kein mitreißendes, aber ein schönes Buch. Noch besser hätte es mir gefallen, wenn der Autor sich ein bisschen kürzer gefasst hätte (762 Seiten).

[pferdina · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was not as excited about this story as the other Irving novels I have read. I like the way he traces his characters' lives over decades of time, but they weren't as fascinating this time.

[thatotter-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hmm...there were a lot of praiseworthy elements, but in the end the story just didn't really grab me. There were too many things that I found mildly implausible (especially about grown-up Ruth's fans and life). The writing was good, but not amazing, though I did really like the chapter titles. The tone shifts from genuinely funny to suspenseful to Lifetime Movie-sappy in different sections. There was a bit too much focus on the intricacies of Long Island and squash for me, as I'm not particularly interested in either.

[jutesch-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Weak. Very weak.

[abshepherd · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed the story and the characters in this novel, but the novel was long. Really long. And it FELT long. Irving spends way too much time and wastes for too many words on details that are just not important. I don't really need to read 3 pages of landscape descriptions every chapter just to get to a pertinent part of the storyline. It is just not relevant.

[ezuk-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What can I say? Irving rocks. I saw the movie before I read the book, so I knew the plot for the first part, I never expected it to go on as epically as it did.

The combination of rich details and deep, convincing characters really makes this a book to savor.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

While meandering at times A Widow For One Year follows the life of Ruth Cole. In Part One it is 1958 and Ruth is only four years old. The plot doesn't necessarily focus on Ruth at this point but rather on her Long Island parents - their endless grief over the accidental death of their teenage sons and the bitter end of their tumultuous marriage. Ruth's father is a celebrated author of books for children, a closet alcoholic and a raging adulterer. He wants to divorce Ruth's mother, Marion, but he first needs to make sure he'll win the custody battle over Ruth. Given his drinking (he can't even drive due to too many dui arrests) and sexual conquests outside the marriage he needs Marion to have an indiscretion of her own to level the playing field. Enter Eddie O'Hare, a sixteen year old high school student from Philips Exeter Academy. Ted hires Eddie to be his writing assistant for the summer but really Eddie is supposed to seduce Marion. It's Eddie who I like the best in this part one. He plays the fool perfectly (oh, but what a sweet and pretty fool). Unwittingly he is a pawn for both Ted and Marion.
In Part Two Ruth, at thirty-six, is an accomplished writer living in New York. The section begins with the very same Eddie O'Hare. He is in town to introduce Ruth at one of her readings. While their paths cross only briefly at this point in the story Ruth is enlightened by Eddie's memories of her mother. She begins to see her parent's divorce in a whole new perspective. Before leaving for a European book tour Eddie gives Ruth a murder mystery he thinks was written by Marion. While in Amsterdam Ruth is witness to the murder of a window prostitute from the red light district.
This sets in motion Part Three which, in the beginning, focuses mostly on the murder of the prostitute from five years earlier. The lead chief inspector has a conundrum. While he was able to solve the murder he now wants to find the witness. The story jumps back fill in the story of the prostitute (which could have been a whole separate book). I don't want to spoil the end except to say it's nice that Irving brought the story full circle.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

An awful book. I read 300 pages and had yet to discern a plot, other than characters screwing each other. Very happy to return this one to the library half read.

[porch_reader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the third of John Irving's books that I've read. (The others are A Prayer for Owen Meany and Last Night in Twisted River.) And I am now more convinced than ever that I should read everything that this man has written. His stories often explore subject matter that I might not usually gravitate toward. For example, a large section of [A Widow for One Year] describes an affair between a high school boy and a woman old enough to be his mom. Another section brings us face-to-face with prostitutes in Amsterdam. But no matter the surface-level subject matter, Irving's real topic is the interplay between relationships and loss, and he explores this topic deeply.

[A Widow for One Year] tells a sweeping story that begins in 1958, as Eddie O'Hare becomes Ted Cole's writer's assistant and Marion Cole's lover. Eddie is witness to a difficult time in the Coles' life, as they continue to mourn the death of their two sons while trying to raise four-year-old Ruth. The events of that summer continue to reverberate 32 years later when Ruth's writing career brings her and Eddie together again. This span of time gives the book the sweeping feel of an epic, although Irving also gives us a close-up look at days and moments in the characters' lives. The narrative is complex, but in the hands of a master like Irving, this is a gift rather than a complication.

Despite the heavy subject matter, Irving's story is laced with humor, and at times, it feels like he is playing with the reader. For example, after I had spent 200 pages wondering if aspiring writer Eddie O'Hare was a semi-autobiographical character, Ruth Cole delivers a diatribe about how good authors make everything up. I felt like Irving had been in my head.

And then there are the chapter titles. There is a short essay at the end of the book in which Irving discusses the chapter titles and first lines, which are the only thing he re-reads after publishing a book. I noticed the clever chapter titles when reading. It's hard not to appreciate titles like, "Why Panic at Ten O'Clock in the Morning?" and "Better than Being with a Prostitute in Paris." But I think I would have paid more attention to the first lines if I'd read the essay first (although since it has spoilers, it probably should be saved until the end). They really do set the tone for various parts of the novel.

I could go on and on about more aspects of this book that deserve noticing, but suffice it to say that reading [A Widow for One Year] is truly enjoyable experience. Each reader will likely take something different from the book because Irving has left so many treasures for us to find. Enjoy!

[clara53_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tragedy and comedy, grief and humor are interlaced in this cleverly written novel; it is sad and hilarious at the same time. Peculiarly, there are several protagonists, and one of them comes to a conclusion by the end of the book about "how fortune and misfortune were unequally distributed, if not at birth then in the course of circumstances beyond our control; and in the seemingly random pattern of colliding events - the people we meet, when we meet them, and if or when these important people might chance to meet someone else..." Out of three major themes running through the book - grief, a writer's world, and promiscuity - the author chose to overemphasize the last one, and that was my only regret. Otherwise, great storytelling.

--

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very well written, but really over the top (would we expect otherwise?) I haven't read any books by John Irving for a while, and enjoyed this one. For some time, when I was a student, Irving was one of my favourite authors, but reading The fourth hand a few years ago was a disappointment. Now, I do no longer care so much for the hilarity, some of real gross. Of course, the episode in Amsterdam appealed to me, and I thought it was well done.

Probably, quite a number of Irving's books would work just as well, or even better, if they were at least a third shorter. I sometimes wished that was the case with this book.

[dgmlrhodes · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The last book I read by John Irving was a Prayer for Owen Meaney - and I was disappointed with A Widow for One Year in comparison.

The book started off as a story about a womanizer married to a cougar and a young boy who likes older women. I did not particularly enjoy the ramblings about the fantasies of an adolescent boy. Then, in the middle of the book and with little transition, the focus shifted to the married couple's daughter Ruth as an adult. Right in the middle of the story a murder mystery is plopped in and then the book is quickly wrapped up a little too neatly. I also felt that the book was somewhat demeaning to women and that the author struggled with portraying a woman as a main character. The constant references to female anatomy parts was just too much.

[appliquetion · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed the journey into the life of Ruth and her family. The twists the relationships took left me smiling as I compared them to relationships I have had or seen others have. The story celebrated all the dysfunctionalism that life is well known for.

I liked how the story inter-weaved the past and present in a continuous flow that showed how life isn't a neat little box after all.

I will defiantly recommend this book to others.

[glorybe1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

John Irving does it again! He really has to be one of my favourite authors. A Widow for One year is again an excellent story of a dysfunctional family, but he takes each character and makes you feel that you know them so well. You just have to fall in love with each and every one of them!
This book is primarily about Ruth Cole and Eddie O'Hare,and is in three parts, it starts in the summer of 1958 when Ruth is 4 and Eddie is 16, he comes to work for Ruth's father Ted as a writers assistant and falls in love with Ruths mother Marion, a love he will have for the rest of his life.
Ruths mother walks out on her family that summer and Ruth does not see her again for 37 years! she is brought up by her philandering father, who does love her dearly and does the best he can.
The next time we see Ruth she is a young unmarried woman who writes for a living. Her choice of men has been terrible so far and her books all reflect the fact. She has been damaged by her life so far, and you get the feeling that she is waiting for something.
The final part of the book we meet Ruth as a woman recently widowed with a child. She has a successful career as a writer and travels around the world. She has an idea for an extraordinary book and this ultimately brings her the love and security she so richly deserves.
I loved it and would recommend it along with every other thing that John Irving has written. You cannot help but get caught up in his characters

[andafiro · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

(Adding this to my library now though I read it some time ago--this title just now showed up as a recommendation and I want to confirm that yes, it's a good recommendation. ;-)

[mydomino1978 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Irving does it again. He takes family dysfunction to new levels, and makes you love the characters. He gives them so much dimension. One of my favorite authors, in this he deals with grief, abandonment, disloyalty and loyalty. Things never turn out the way they seem they will. It is nice to read an author who is not predictible and formulaic.

[the_rock_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

John Irving is a brilliant writter. I do not have much interest in American Culture, but this book is on so many levels and describes with such detail a period of about 60 years from an American Perspective as well as the changes a family and people go through within that time. A real good read an highly recommended.

[lynettemilligan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my favorites. I loved that the main character was so incredibly flawed. Every time I go to turn left I think about what way my wheels are turned.

[ahgonzales · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book is written in three parts. It begins with the main character's (Ruth) childhood from the point of view of her mother's lover and then jumps to her in adulthood. The last part is from a separate character's point of view and felt disjointed. A majority of the characters are writers and the excerpts of their writing within the story didn't help the chunky feel of the novel. It literally feels like a different book is written into the middle. I appreciated the unique characters and gender themes. Strangely told, but an interesting read.