Rating: 
Summary: not Irving's best
Review: It was a dificult book to finish, Ruth a famous author is witness of the murder of a hooker in Amsterdam, a few years later a street cop (who knew very well the hooker) finds Ruth and they fell in love(yeah right,yuk) I've read some Irving's novels and like his work but this one dissapointed me.
Rating: 
Summary: Grabs you like an empty picture hook
Review: This book has been so much reviewed here that it seems silly to add my piece, but I just finished reading it and feel moved to comment. I love Irving's way of extracting the horror of everyday life -- those losses that happen randomly and always, cross our fingers, to someone else. The main character's dead older brothers were as real as my own children, making their mother's lifelong grief seem utterly plausible and wrenching. I also love Irving's masterful "children's" stories that are integrated throughout the early part of the book. They may even be more layered and haunting than the adult book itself. One problem, at least, that irritated me all the way through: he keeps telling us what we will be finding out later. Way too much foreshadowing in a way that seemed awfully clumsy and annoying to me. Also reminding us of what we've already been told, over and over, as though he doesn't trust the reader to remember. And maybe we could have had a little less focus on bodies and how they look compared to their ages. Seemed a bit obsessive. Yet I kept turning the pages right up to the surprisingly wish-fulfilling ending. Nothing wrong with that, for a change.
Rating:
Summary: Never been pregnant
Review: "You write about abortion and childbirth and adoption, but you've never even been pregnant. You write about being a divorcee and a widow, but you've never even been married. You write about when it's safe for a widow to re-enter the world, but there is no such thing as a widow for one year. I will be a widow for the rest of my life!" p.311 An outstanding work, characteristic of John Irving. Good philosophical debate on art. Irving built a great deal of dialogue around the question of whether novelists write autobiographically or whether their creation is wholly fabricated. To me, the dialogue can easily be extended to other areas of art. It seems that the message or the meaning depicted through art is necessarily autobiographical. It has to be. It is what is core to the artist. The form of conveyance, the story, could be entirely fabricated, though doesn't have to be... I enjoyed the picture hooks and the use of photographs to develop a childhood - Irving is such a unique creator. The only parts of Widow that disappointed were that it lacked the humor of Owen Meany and Water Method Man. Though that level of humor is seemingly impossible to achieve, let alone recreate. The other disappointing piece that surprised me was the happy ending. Everyone got what they wanted and lived happily ever after. The finish was different from what I've grown used to in Irving's works.
Rating: 
Summary: A Wonderful Change for Irving
Review: I am a huge John Irving fan and I always look forward to his latest book. I was pleasantly surprised by Widow as he has never had a female main character in any of his well crafted novels. Ruth was a wonderfully drawn woman, so much depth and richness to her character and the world around her. This is the story of Ruth Cole, from her childhood thru her life as an adult and all the people that fill her life from start to finish. When Ruth is a young child she discovers her mother, Marion, having an affair with Eddie, the teenager hired to drive her father, a drunk and wildly popular children's author, around for the summer. After this her mother disappears from her life. Both Eddie and Ruth become authors as well. Eddie, not quite a popular author, never quite got over his affiar with Ruth's mother and thus writes about it in every one of his novels. Ruth, on the other hand, is well known and loved. The book begins to take off when they meet again, after Eddie is asked to open a reading for Ruth. Their lives once again become entertwined as they both search for answer about Marion's disappearance and life. The novel also centers around Ruth's relationship with her father. The plot is engrossing and well rounded. This novel is full of the things that Irving fan's have come to expect and love. Widow has become one of my favorite Irving novels - sitting next to Garp, Owen Meany and Cider House Rules. This book deserves to be savored like a fine wine.
Rating:
Summary: Widow for One Year the Best
Review: Truly moving and powerful book. One of Irving's best. A must for women in the prime of life! :-)
Rating:
Summary: Another Irving masterpiece
Review: In just a few words, another highly enjoyable work from this original writer. A Prayer for Owen Meany was his best, but this is not far behind.
Rating:
Summary: How did John Irving avoid me?
Review: I am an avid reader, but somehow I missed all of John Irving's books! I found a widow for one year, and I am just now finishing it. John Irving took me from one extreme to the other and I love the characters. Ted Cole, we all know a Ted Cole. Eddie Ohare could be my own son, and Ruth...well as a child, I wanted to wrap her in my arms and protect her, as an adult, she becomes my heroine. I really want this book to not end. I just bought the hotel new hampshire, the cider house rules, and a prayer for owen meaney. I have become a firm and fast fan of John Irving. This is a book that I will read again, with pleasure.
Rating:
Summary: "A Sound like someone trying not to make a sound"
Review: There is always a special phrase, or a special person, that stays with you forever when you read a John Irving novel, that becomes a part of the fabric of your life. As usual, he does not wrap things up neatly in a little happy ending package....it's real life---frayed at the edges life, vintage John Irving "sounding like someone trying not to make a sound"....it whispers its way into your heart---its a wonderful read!
Rating: 
Summary: Best and Worst Impulses from Past Works
Review: I feel very mixed about this novel. It contains a great deal of lecturing about the writing life that I found self-indulgent and distracting. The characters often functioned more as soundboards for Irving's ideas about writing than as living, breathing characters. They also often did things to advance the plot that I felt these characters, as Irving established them, would never have done. I've never had that feeling so strongly before in an Irving novel, and it was disappointing. On the other hand, there were some wonderful characters along the way. I loved the world he weaved, the Long Island house which seemed so real by the end, and I find myself sorry to have finished the novel and left it. The larger themes of love and loss and family all worked for me, as did the fairy tale fashion in which all the plot strands were tied neatly together. Irving certainly has a unique literary style. Some love it; some hate it. I concur with many of the people here who say this book does not equal "Garp", "Cider House" or "Owen Meany". But it was still a fine book.
Rating:
Summary: and then the widow...
Review: John Irving has written another book of some interest to those willing to explore their inner selves when faced with the craziness of life. Like Owen, Homer and Garp, Ruth too must deal with a life that never quite adds up. I found this to be near his best, right along side of Cider House and Owwn Meany. Give it some time and you find parts of it continue to creep into your thoughts. "Life of meaning: to be of use: a sound like soemone trying not to make a sound"...all of these stick. If literature is written so we remember and are marked by it--JI is hitting the mark.
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