Rating: 
Summary: Haunting and Beautiful,A Widow For One Year is a worthy read
Review: A Widow For One Year focus's on human longing and the high emotion surrounding a family trajedy. The story is about Ruth Cole, a four year old (when we first meet her) who lives in a house where photographs of her dead brothers rule the walls, as well as her mothers mind. Ruth's summer is interupted when her father hires Eddie, a 16 year old writers assistent to seduce her mother. After a turbulant summer, we again meet Ruth at age forty, where she, like her father is a popular writer, and eventually must face her demons left over from her short lived relationship with her mother, and her strange relationship with her father. The book becomes as emotional as it is disturbing, almost forcing one to understand the lives that people live and the reasons that they live for. Irving makes the lives of each character vital and challenging, there is no enemy, yet the reader becomes so involved in the lives of these characters that they move with then through the novel and almost fear the end of it. "A Widow" is most beautiful the language Irving uses to describe his characters, as he speaks of the dead boys that will forever haunt Ruth, Marion, Ted, and even Eddie, shivers will run down your spine, this book is amazing and is Irving at his best, if you liked "Garp" you will love " A Widow".
Rating:
Summary: Mine of Inspiration and Information
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed delving into this mine of information and inspiration and travelling through its well lit maze of shafts at Irving's hilarious pace. I found it a great read for anyone who has ever tried to tell a story.
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment
Review: I love John Irving. He is a funny, quirky and captivating writer who often hits me right in the centre of my heart. That's the problem with this book. Its as if he is TRYING to be quirky, that he knows that is his hallmark. Instead, his characters come of seeming flawed or pathetic. The book started out where a tragedy is announced and I was immediately pulled into the novel and ready for some heartwrenching times. Instead, as the book progressed, I had trouble reading it becuase it seemed like he was just trying to hard or something. If you read Prayer for Owen Meany, then Son of the Circus, then you read this book, you are in for a big disappointment.
Rating: 
Summary: A nice read, but not too realistic...
Review: John Irving is one of those writers whose books are pleasant to read, not too difficult, entertaining, interesting unusual stories, in short, he writes bestsellers. The story has two main narrators, Ruth Cole and Eddie, both writers. The book starts out with Eddie, who has taken a summer job as a writer's assistant, working for Ruth's father, Ted, a well known children's books writer who is more interested in the young mothers than the kids. Ruth's mother, Marion, is obsessed with her two sons who died as teenagers in an autoaccident for which she feels responsible. The mysterious reason for this is revealed later on. This obsession and these feelings of guilt are what keep her from loving her daughter and probably also from loving her husband. Ted, who seems to care even less for Marion, sets young Eddie up for an affair with his much older wife, a theme that later comes back endlessly through Eddie's writings about men who are attracted to much older women. That summer, right before Eddie is about to leave, Marion takes off, leaving no trace of either herself or her dead sons. From this point on we enter Ruth's life, who is also a writer (Is there anyone in this book who isn't??? No, sorry), and is of course "destined" to meet Eddie again after about 30 years, who then becomes one of her friends. In between the whole divorce/affair story line, Ruth goes to Amsterdam to do some promotion and starts writing a new book. About a writer, what else? She accidentally becomes the witness to a murder, which turns out to be not half as awful for Ruth as it seemed. If you're still with me here, yes, everyone in this book is a writer, and often writing about writers as well. Although this book is quite a nice read, it only gets three stars from me, for not being very realistic. John Irving should perhaps have stuck with a male protagonist, as Ruth comes across rather unrealistic for a woman. Wanting to write about a woman who stands behind a curtain and watches a prostitute at work, really seems like more of a male fantasy, not to mention this constant reminder of John Irving's obsession with Ruth's large breasts that are mentioned about once every paragraph. The behavior of one of Ted Cole's mistresses is also a little odd. What woman would run out of a house screaming, jump into a car and chase her ex-lover around, attempting to run him over, in which also attempting to kill her gardener who told Ted to "run"?!? Then there are the smaller, simples details, such as Ted Cole's car, that is a brand and color that were very unlikely in the 50's. If you're looking for an entertainign read, perhaps for a long plane ride or on a train, this book is great, because it's definitely a pleasant read, but if you're looking for a more substantial book that would be worth reading again, go with something else, like Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone or I Know This Much Is True, which would probably be appealing to readers of John Irving books, but that is a little more interesting with more realistic characters.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling
Review: I admit I am relatively new to John Irving's work. After seeing The Cider House Rules, I decided to pick up one of his novels, The Water Method Man. It was very refreshing in the midst of Harry Potter, Tom Clancy, and Micheal Crichton (Man, that was all the way back to third grade). So, I then picked up A Widow For One Year. I simply loved it. It was so engrossing, I didn't want to let it go. The character of Eddie intrigued me the most. I guess I identified with him somewhat. He holds on for so long that perhaps this impossible relationship would some day be possible again. I loved every page, every chapter. I laughed. I cried. I read it whenever I could get the chance and my AP Chemistry grade has suffered because of it. I began Owen Meany yesterday, and from what I've read so far, I think I'm in for an even better expierence. Take it from me, a 17 year-old kid: read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific!
Review: As a reader, you either love John Irving's novels or you hate them---he is definitely an acquired taste. As both a reader and a writer, I LOVE John Irving---his novels are quirky and funny, and I could only hope to write a novel as good as A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR. Lusty, quirky and laugh-out loud funny, A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR deals with love---between child and parent, between men and women, and the devastating grief of a parent's loss of a child. At the age of four, Ruth Cole is abandoned by her mother Marion, and left in the care of her father Ted, a writer of children's books and a notorious womanizer. A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR is essentially Ruth's story, following her life for the next thirty-six years as she becomes a best-selling novelist, and struggles to come to terms with her love-hate relationship with her father and her abandonment by her mother, as she searches for real love and longs for a family of her own. A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR is an engaging and compulsively readable novel, filled with eccentrically human characters and deep emotion. This is definitely one of Irving's best!
Rating: 
Summary: Read This Book!
Review: I have come to expect certain things from a John Irving novel. Lets just say that the man does not exactly concern himself with breaking new ground every time he writes a story. Certain themes, neurosis, and events seem to repeat themselves every now and then in Irving's novels. This is most definetly true about Widow For One Year. However, this does not detract from the story in the least. It is extremely engaging (I miss the characters 2 months after haing finished the book). I think the thing that this book succeeds in better than any of his others is how real it is. Fitting of a New-Englander. Take the time to read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Touching and funny
Review: John Irving touches on familiar themes, in a familiar style (including books within books, a heavy infusion of erotic content, and sporadic, shocking violence). But this is not a re-hash of his earlier work. Rather, it is a more mature, disciplined novel, which made me laugh out loud and - at a key moment - find myself crying tears of joy in the middle of an airplane. Quite simply, it is the best book by one of my favorite authors.
Rating: 
Summary: long-winded and annoying
Review: It starts with a titillating beginning but meanders through a plot and characters that defy reason and reality. Intelligent, educated people don't discourse with the f-word as their favorite adjective. Nor do women friends call one another "baby" all the time. The ending was predictable. The character were losers. It was annoying, and I wouldn't have wasted my time had it not been a book club book. One can easily skim, since Irving is so verbose, without missing anything.
Rating:
Summary: Enthralling and captivating a "must read"
Review: In addition to being well written with wonderful character development, A Widow for One Year is in spots, laugh out loud funny. The chase scene with Mrs. Vaugh attempting to murder Ted was side splitting; Ruth's attack on lawyer Saunders was as totally satisfying as it was comedic; and Eddie, Ruth's mother's 16 year old lover, was down right goofy as every step he made brought tears of laughter. Ted, the father, is the worst excuse for a man yet an endearing father to 4 year old Ruth. Marion, Ruth's mother, is insanely depressed, a detriment to the rearing of her daughter, yet she is functional enough to see her failings and give the best she could in the only way she could ---- by abandoning Ruth and leaving her in the care of her father. Ruth, conflicted by feelings of love and hate for her best friend Hannah and her father and puzzlement about why her mother left, must somehow persevere. It is a marvelous story and the genius of Mr. Irving's imagination which creates the most unbelieveable yet plausible situations makes it a work which every avid reader must own.
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