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Summary: Don't agree with last reviewer...
Review: I strongly disagree with the last review, the one that states Irving's stories are basically easy reads. This couldn't be further from the truth. His novels are complex and developed, a better example of simple easy reads would be in Elizabeth Berg books or Anne Tyler (I think these authors are wonderful, but fit the description of light and easy much better.) Yes, he does write best sellers, but not for the reason you stated!
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Summary: Irving entertains, that's all
Review: A great entertainment. But is it a great novel? I really don't think so; now, can i explore and explain the difference? In "Owen Meany" Irving created a great plot and compelling characters who drag the reader along with them as they live into the future. Here, the plot is strong, though not as forceful as "Owen Meany", but the characters, i'm afraid, lack something. The most compelling character in the book is the one who is least in it: Marion, the wife who seduces the young Eddie O'Hare and then disappears for the next four hundred and twentysix pages. The heroine, Ruth, Marion's daughter, a successful writer, is attractive, well explained (the omniscient author), but not as strong a person as the missing Marion. Her friend Hannah, the sexual animal, is understandable (we know her motivations), but not attractive. Eddie is sympathetic, but also pathetic. I cannot say i dislike the book, because i enjoyed it; i do find Irving a distracting writer sometimes, though ~ i feel as though he is writing a "French Lieutenant's Woman" but doesn't have the same ability as (not less, just different from) Fowles. Perhaps i am actually expecting too much; to be a great entertainment should maybe be enough for a book; and i'm not sure that anything could have changed this into a great novel as well, in my opnion. At any rate, i shall continue to read Irving, and expect to enjoy his books.
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Summary: GARP, IT'S NOT - BUT . . .
Review: I love John Irving's books, so when I saw this new title I was delighted to add another to my library. I was somewhat hesitant when I saw "thanks" to the Dutch Government, but, I thought, look what he did with Austria in "Hotel New Hampshire". Well, I finally read it and, although I could put it down, it was far better than I had expected. It was not pleasant, but interesting. Many of the characters are true to life, others - well, just a bit far-fetched. This book is not the tragi-comedy "Garp" nor "HNH" is. There is far more tragedy than comedy here, excepting some of "Dad's" escapades. If you love Irving, do read this book, but don't expect it to reach the level of what he has done before. Enough said!
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Summary: How important is sex?
Review: How important is sex? Apparently very, according to John Irving in A Widow for One Year. But it's not everything. In this novel, the characters that are led astray by bad sexual choices are never truly happy- for example: Ted, Hannah, and Ruth (with her bad boyfriends). The characters are only truly happy when they are in love, and as a prerequisite for love, the sex must be good! After all, why wasn't Ruth in love with Allan? Inadequate physical attraction, lackluster sex. But with Dutch "what was that sound" Harry, the chemistry was there. In A Widow for One Year, the characters are only truly happy and fulfilled when they are in a loving relationship. The widow who persecuted Ruth: unhappy. The divorced woman who came to buy Ruth's house: unhappy. Hannah: unhappy. Ted: unhappy. Marion + Eddie: happy. Ruth + Harry: happy. So, don't marry your best friend. And don't look for personal fulfillment in a career or even parenthood. If you're like the characters in this book, marry for love and you'll be happy for life (but first find out if the sex is any good).
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Summary: Irving for Beginners
Review: "A Widow for one Year" was the fourth book I read by John Irving. Like in previous novels, his incredible ability for storytelling shines through from the moment you pick up the book. However, it is NOT a typical Irving novel in my opinion. Yes, you meet some of the typical Irving character-types in Ruth and Eddie, but they are not as "uniquely entertaining" as other fictitious characters of previous novels. In fact, Ruth and Eddie are pretty much your "average day people", who, apart from their personal experiences, could be anybody's neighbors. It also seemed to me as if the story never really reaches a true climax. The chapters playing in Amsterdam were interesting, even more so if you have actually been there yourself hence know how to visualize the famous red-light district. It is probably my fault, but I fail to see, why a best-selling, internationally recognized author like Ruth needs to research what is actually going on behind those dimly illuminated windows of purchased pleasure. The overall story is interesting and certainly good reading entertainment, but if you want to discover, what makes Irving's books stand out from contemporary literature, if you want to experience, how phenominally the author tackles very controversial topics without forcing his personal opinon on to the reader, I suggest you pick books such as "The Cider House Rules", "A Prayer for Owen Meany" or "The Hotel New Hampshire". In one sentence: "A Widow for one year" is really Irving for Beginners.
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Summary: My first John Irving book
Review: This was my first John Irving book and I enjoyed every minute of it. I think he's a great storyteller and I can't wait to read another one.
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Summary: Lots of fun, but somewhat of a stretch.
Review: This book was a fun read, but one must suspend their disbelief at times with regard to the characters. Quite unlikely that Eddie would have held a torch for Marion for nearly 40 years, and I was never convinced of Ruth's fame. She didn't seem witty or gifted enough to warrant worldwide fans who waited in anticipation for "Ruth Cole's next novel." Why would a Dutch cop care about the Ruth Cole that we met through this book? She seemed entirely too ordinary. But it was a lot of fun anyway.
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Summary: Writers Who Love Themselves Too Much
Review: It seems a shame to me, when writers make their heroes and heroines novelists. Can't they be a bit more imaginative? All the main characters are writers. The most fascinating part of the book for me was Ruth's investigation into Dutch prostitution as research for her book. It was terribly exciting, believe me, I was right there behind the curtain! The sexual encounter between beautiful 16 year old preppy Eddie and the elegant Mrs Cole was also quite titillating but his life-long continued enfatuation quite ridiculos. I feel slightly embarassed to say John Irving has a very high opinion of himself, which I share, but for all the wrong reasons.
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Summary: Irving scores with this one!
Review: This deeply moving novel is the most satisfying John Irving reads since Owen Meany. It did remind me a bit too much of Garp at points - the dysfunctional/odd family situation, obession with sexual connotations (Ruth's breasts seem to get more attention than Ruth herself!), and the tragically comic situations that take place during this story - however, there is a new coat of paint on this 'scene', and it is different enough to hold you till the end. As one review put it somewhere in the book, Irving is like "MAD magazine meets Charles Dickens". I really can't put it any better in a nutshell that that observation. He is, and will always be, one of my favorite authors. And 'Widow' is a fine addition to his repetoire of brilliant novels. Granted, Irving is not everyone's cuppa tea, as his reading does require a longer attention span than your average dog - something that a lot of today's 'thriller' authors cater to. However, it is apparent that John took a lot of time to carefully craft this mini-masterpiece of a novel into a touching, moving and endlessly interesting piece of literature. Is it his best? No. Is it worth your time? I'd say so. A MUST for all Irving fans, and actually a fairly decent introduction to him for 'newbies'. I won't go into details of what happens, as it appears that a lot of other reviewers have already...what I can say is that John takes us on a whirlwind trip of some 50 years of the Cole family, and he carefully develops each character enough for you to begin to care, relate and wonder what happens to each of them - right till the highly satisfying emotional ending. This is worth the price of admission alone - enjoy it today!
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Summary: The World Of Garp Icon Returns!
Review: Hard to believe, but we have eclipsed the 20th anniversary of The World According to Garp, a novel nearly everybody read, reread, talked about, and foisted on friends. John Irving's slapstick tragedy about a famous writer and his bizarro extended family achieved the kind of cultural and psychic penetration that happens nowadays only with celebrity trials, Washington sex scandals, and $200 million disaster movies. But success on that grand a scale comes at a price, and while Irving has continued to produce good books, his career over the past two decades has often seemed like a manic attempt to top Garp. If novels like The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany have at times resembled his masterpiece in sheer energy, they've never matched it in scope, psychology, or wit. Now, in A Widow for One Year, he's returned to the world of Garp--the world of writers--to imagine the life and times of Ruth Cole, "a well-respected literary novelist and an internationally best-selling author." More restrained than his fiction of recent years, and as heartfelt as anything he's done, Widow stands as one of Irving's best novels and a worthy thematic sequel to his most famous creation. We first meet Ruth in the summer of 1958, when she's 4. Her father, Ted, a lazy but successful writer and illustrator of children's books, spends most of his time seducing miserably unhappy Long Island housewives. Ruth's mother, Marion, at 39 still "one of the most beautiful women alive," passes her solitary days at home studying the framed snapshots of her two dead sons that cover nearly every inch of wall space. (As teenagers, Thomas and Timothy Cole died in a car crash.) Consumed by grief and emotionally distant from her young daughter ("...if I let myself love Ruth...what will I do if something happens to her?"), Marion decides to abandon her family. Before she does, though, a 16-year-old prep school boy named Eddie O'Hare arrives from New Hampshire to work as Ted's assistant. Smitten with (okay, aroused by) his employer's wife, Eddie is amazed--as many readers might be as well--when Marion starts taking him to bed. Day after day. Sixty times, by Eddie's count. At summer's end, Marion simply disappears, and it's that one selfish (or maybe selfless) act of abandonment that determines the path her lover and daughter eventually follow. They grow up to become writers, Eddie doggedly penning younger man/older woman autobiographical novels and Ruth, with more acclaim, writing novels about the repercussions of making choices. Except for Kurt Vonnegut, there's probably not another major living American writer whose eccentricities are as flagrant, or as indelibly fixed, as those of John Irving. In novel after novel, here as in Garp, parents fail, lust is perilous, accidents happen, and "the grief over lost children never dies." And, here as in Garp, characters--no matter how old they grow--never quite shake off the awkwardness, innocence, or unflagging self-absorption of adolescence. A combination of vaudeville, romance, and sentimentality, A Widow for One Year is never entirely convincing, but like a warm bath, it's a great pleasure to immerse yourself in.
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