A Widow for One Year

Rating:
Summary: Forgettable Characters
Review: My husband and I often read the same fiction and one of the pleasures of our marriage is to compare impressions. I like to ask him: "where are you now?" "What is happening to character X or Y?" Or more specifically: " why do you think character Z committed suicide?" Unfortunately,Widow For One Year cannot be shared in this way because three months and four other books later, my husband can barely remember the characters. I just finished the book over the weekend and I can understand why.

Ruth is not "unforgettable" as the hardback book jacket suggests. On the contrary, she is easy to forget. We can't and don't remember her because we never get close enough to understand her. We don't understand why she falls in love for the first time at age 42; why her best friend is Hannah; why she thinks that witnessing sex with a prostitute (in the company of a bad boyfriend) would change her in some significant way; why she is competitive with her father; why her own novels are popular yet critical successes.

Eddie, the lovable main character in Book I, falls into the shadows in Books II and III and we never get close to him again. We never really understand why he sustains his love for Ruth's mother and why - oh yes, why? Marion comes back to him. Hannah is "the bestfriend from hell," and Dutch Harry is the one to make Ruth happy but we never get close to the substance of either relationship. Thus, we can't remember much about these people and the book fades quickly from our minds and hearts as we turn to other works of fiction with stronger more developed characters. (E.g., Margot Harrington in The Sixteen Pleasures by Robert Hellenga or Sayuri in Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden).

This is unfortunate because Irving's novels promise so much. He is a master story-teller with a powerful sense of observation and his characters deserve to be remembered. One of the best parts of the book for me was Irving's description of Eddie's nightmare Manhatten journey in the rain when he is expected to introduce Ruth at a reading. Irving's attention to detail gives rich texture to a nightmare odyssey that is, in fact, a rather ordinary frustrating experience. The same can be said for Irving's description of the photographs and the hooks on which they were once suspended. His use of words gives the reader a profound psychological experience with ordinary things. In contrast, his dialogue is almost banal at times and the motivation of the characters gets lost in trivial language. This is particularly true for Hannah whose mentality and responses are so shallow we can't help wondering why Ruth values her at all.

I didn't find Widow boring as some reviewers have suggested. I just wonder how much of it I will remember two months from now.

Rating:
Summary: hope for just a little misfortune
Review: This book, like many of Irving's other books, reminds us, as we take on the challenges of life, to keep things in perspective. That we should be so lucky as to only suffer "a little misfortune" in our lives is a simple message delivered with the opening quote preceding the story, and driven home with the story itself. There is wisdom in keeping things in perspective and John Irving knows this. I wish you all just a little misfortune, and no more.

Rating:
Summary: Too Many Wonderful Characters
Review: John Irving creates some of his most incredible characters in this book. The problem is there are too many good characters and as you want to get to know more about one, Irving switches gears and you now are in the middle of someone else's life. This proves to be very disconcerting and takes your attention away from the plot. Much more focussed than Son of the Circus, A Widow for One Year is enjoyable but lacks the emotional depth of Garp or Owen Meany.

Rating:
Summary: By far, Not His Best Work
Review: Having read the majority of Mr. Irving's works and throughly enjoying all have have read, I was sadly disappointed with this novel. Editorial reviews, which I have now learned to ignore, claimed that Ruth was one of his best characters yet! Where they reading the same book I was? Ruth does not possess any of the flare that his other main characters often have. She, and the other characters in this book, is dull. I had to force myself to finish this novel. I usually look foward to re-reading his novels, this novel will most likely end up in a garage sale.

Rating:
Summary: Has John Irving ever been a widow(er)?
Review: Unbelievable Mr Irving. Totally

Rating:
Summary: Not the best novel
Review: In Argentina this book was considered Novel of the Year (1999). Although I could get through the book easily, I don't think it could deserve such honour.

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Irving, I am waiting for your next entry. You have 24 hr
Review: Some ones love adults. Much more adult than themselves. This is a story about deep age differences between lovers or could-be lovers. This book is about sex in various forms which are all far from standard, although nothing filthy. As an additional spice, another theme from Garp returns here in full motion, namely oversized fear for children. Irving once wrote in a preface to the newest edition of Garp that he is constantly worried that his children will die. He has nightmares every day and claims this is a good thing to have ones as a good parent. Here these fears are exemplified quite drastically. If you ask me what thing has stayed in my mind a year after reading the novel, I would tell you the following: Ruth's breasts. There is a lot in the book about how impressive they are. In fact, Irving can't help himself and every time Ruth appears on the stage, there is something about that. Quite good analysis of fixation. Hm...

Rating:
Summary: A pseudonym?
Review: I am very disappointed in this book. To me it was idle ramblings of a bored writer. It contained long passages of repetitive descriptions, which in my mind had nothing whatsoever to do with the story - for the was a story there but it was overpadded with witter. The book could have easily been editted down to 100 pages. Maybe John Irving is a pseudonym for Eddie O'Hare!

Rating:
Summary: Compelling But Not Convincing
Review: The best parts of this book, in which every significant character is a writer (except one who is a reader), are the retellings of the children's stories written by the father of the protagonist, Ted Cole. They are children's thrillers, all scary. The scariest one's title is "A Sound Trying Not to Make a Sound."

The book begins in 1958. Ted Cole is a philandering husband, frustrated novelist and successful author/illustrator of children's books. He's a decent father. He's married to Marian Cole. Her life is completely devastated by the deaths of their two children in a car accident at age 17 and 15, five years before the novel starts. They have a four-year old daughter Ruth who Marian hadn't wanted to conceive.

At the time of Ted and Marian "trial separation" Marian begins a steamy affair with a sixteen year-old boy, Eddie O'hare. Marian was 39. At the end of the summer Marian abandons her daughter, husband, and lover. She shows up again 39 years later.

I'm not revealing anything to you that Irving doesn't reveal almost at the beginning of the book. Irving tells you the bare outline in advance, teasingly. He keeps you interested, but doesn't usually deliver the goods. The story is compelling but not convincing. It's interesting, but doesn't ring true. It's ironic that this is some of the same criticism leveled against most of the fictional writer/characters in the book. Eddie's never having stopped loving Marian may be believable, but it is certainly irritating. For a more compelling tale of a teenager who is forever changed by a somewhat abusive relationship with an older woman, read "The Reader" by Bernard Schlink.

The last two thirds of the book jump to 1990-5 when Ruth has grown up and become a successful literary novelist. She's unhappy of course. However, her latest book, "My Last Bad Boyfriend" marks a true change in her. She is finally able to marry. But true love doesn't come until a few years later. For a "true and unexpected love at last" book that is better than this one, read Zora Neale Hurston's, "Their Eyes Were Watching God." This book is a page-turner. It kept me interested. I cared about the characters. But it's lack of focus and pat resolutions left me unsatisfied.

Rating:
Summary: must read!
Review: I loved the book - as others, had trouble really getting into it at first, but towards the middle, the plot and characters pulled me in, and didn't let go. Being Dutch, I can also add Irving has done an EXCELLENT job at not only getting all the Dutch names right, but he also obviously has spent quite a while roaming the streets of Amsterdam: I could not find one single mistake or 'made up' fact. What a wonderful book!