"One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole woke to the sound of lovemaking--it was coming from her parents' bedroom." This sentence opens John Irving's ninth novel, A Widow for One Year , a story of a family marked by tragedy. 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 critical time in her life. When we first ...
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"One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole woke to the sound of lovemaking--it was coming from her parents' bedroom." This sentence opens John Irving's ninth novel, A Widow for One Year , a story of a family marked by tragedy. 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 critical 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 on the fall of 1990, when she 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.
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Add this copy of A Widow for One Year to cart. $3.48, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 1999 by Vintage Books Canada.
Add this copy of A Widow for One Year to cart. $3.48, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1999 by Vintage Books Canada.
Add this copy of A Widow for One Year to cart. $3.50, very good condition, Sold by HPB-Ruby rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 1999 by Random House of Canada, Limited.
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Add this copy of A Widow for One Year: a Novel to cart. $6.99, good condition, Sold by Wonder Book - Member ABAA/ILAB rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Frederick, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1999 by Vintage Books Canada.
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Add this copy of A Widow for One Year: a Novel to cart. $12.99, very good condition, Sold by Russell Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Victoria, BC, CANADA, published 1999 by Vintage Books Canada.
Add this copy of A Widow for One Year: a Novel to cart. $12.99, good condition, Sold by Russell Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Victoria, BC, CANADA, published 1999 by Vintage Books Canada.
John Irving's novels have a tendency to push the reader to the edge of their seat. There are no dramatic fight scenes or improbable scenarios. Rather, Irving understands what it is that makes the reader feel uncomfortable, what is just a little too much, but not so much that it becomes unbelievable.
If you read Irving simply for an entertaining story, you will absolutely get it with A Widow for One Year, but if you enjoy experiencing the writer's more subtle tricks, playing off of first sentences and pulling on scenarios from 200 pages earlier to tie together a plot line ever so gracefully, you will be thrilled.
Irving is a master of first sentences (one of his literary passions) and is incredible at pushing the reader to experience his characters in a personal way.
I take a rather long time to read novels, sometimes putting them down for weeks mid-read. But with this particular book, I couldn't put it down. In fact, I was late to more than a few events and dinners because of it.
In other words, highly recommended.
Tonya
Apr 3, 2007
Great Story
This is the BEST John Irving book I have read. The story grabs you and pulls you in and keeps a hold on you right to the end. You will be sad to see it end.
The scenes are set with such skill that you can actually see them.
