Rating: 
Summary: Good Job :)
Review: This book totally got me into John Irving. It started out a bit slow and there are some boring parts, but i like how this story went throughout ones lifetime, it was so real and the emotions were flowing. I definitely suggest reading this book :)
Rating: 
Summary: Spectacular writing. A literary feast of good writing.
Review: As the jacket reminds us - Irving's WFOY is 'a joy to read'. There is a mellifluosness (honeyed) quality to his prose which makes it easy to scan. And his interests are quite reflexive, and self-conscious - a writer, writing about writers, and the process of the author gathering the material for his/her next work. The structure of this long book - quite rightly compared to his (self-confessed) exemplars - the Victorian novelists - makes for a challenging and involved read - a book with its head and shoulders well above the others around it. And, no doubt, this 'honeyed challenge', is in large part, responsible for the joy experienced during the read. Irving revels in laying bare the processes that go on in a writer's mind - in displaying (to echo TS Eliot's words) 'the function of a novelist'. Irving (through his heroine) quotes Graham Greene's essay, where Greene was reflecting on the novelist as a 'guide through the unseemly'. Is it unseemly to witness Marion Cole - recently bereaved by the death of her twin sons - finding a sexual release for her grief in the young Eddie O'Hare? - (who is about the same age of her sons when they died). Is it unseemly as "we" stand with the heroine, in the closet of the prostitute, and "witness" the dreadful death scene? Would we have ever let such material range through our own minds without the guiding force that the novelist, through his heroine, has provided? I think that Irving powerfully demonstrates just what he sees one aspect of the function of the novelist to be - and be brave! Read him - you'll be impressed! This reader certainly was.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing Beats Experiencing Life
Review: I fell in love with this book--not at first sight--more towards the middle of the book. The characters invited me in and kept me interested. Towards the middle I became fascinated. The Author keeps bringing you back to the fact that you must experience life, not simply observe it.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining but not great literature
Review: I have read almost all of John Irving's novels and have been thoroughly entertained by all of them. This novel is no exception. It was over 500 pages long yet I was able to read it very quickly. Unlike some other readers, it kept my attention to the end. I agree with others, though, that it is no Owen Meany or Ciderhouse Rules. I thought Marion, Ted, and Eddie were wonderfully wrought, believeable, and interesting characters. However, I found the protagonist, Ruth, to be pretty superficial. The only understanding I had of her character was that she had wonderful, large breasts. (I may have liked the book even better if her breasts were not mentioned so frequently.) I thought her character was the most interesting at age four. Futhermore, I found it difficult to see what the point was to this novel. What kind of social commentary is he making? Big breasted women are superior? Tragedies really screw up families? Ruth's gradual understanding of her mother's reasons for leaving her seems obvious and forced. Although I have these criticisms, I do give the novel four stars for its entertainment value. The story line was creative and the foreshadowing actually helped me stay interested. It was a good read, although I would not consider it a great literary achievement.
Rating: 
Summary: Widow needs some help...
Review: As an avid Irving fan, I snatched this book out of the bag when my boyfriend returned home from the bookstore. Unfortunatley, it was a somewhat of a struggle to the finish. Overly wordy, I skimmed quite a bit when Irving would go off on seemingly unrelated tangents. Although I was pleased to see a female as the main character, I just never really identified with her. I liked her best in the only "first-person" chapter in the book - I felt I got to know her much better. There were plenty of little irritations that I noticed others have mentioned... the constant foreshadowing, the overused italics, the continuous references to Ruth's breasts (how great could they be? ) and the Hanna character (I wanted to hit her)! Despite my complaints, though, the story did have it's moments. Irving can spin a tale, that's for sure -- and he certainly does his research. Unlike some others who mentioned the first third of the book was the best, I was glad to move on up to Ruth's life when she was an adult. Final diagnosis: so-so
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I couldn't believe how gripping and intense this book was. I loved i
Rating:
Summary: Not always believable
Review: John Irving does a great job of showing how almost all the lives in this book are affected by two deaths that occurred years before. The characters are complex, with the exception of Hanna, a two-dimensional harridan (why did Ruth put up with her ? )The plot was believable until the murder which occurs about halfway through the book. The subsequent actions relating to this crime, as well as the marriage that comes out of it, are totally unbelievable and inconsistent with Ruth's character up to that point. In general, I would recommend the book. There's certainly enough to discuss if you're in a reading group.
Rating: 
Summary: Forgettable Characters
Review: Ruth is not "unforgettable" as the hardback bookjacket suggests. On the contrary, she is easy to forget. Thus, wecan'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;Sayuri in Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden; or Madelene Burden in The Woman and The Ape by Peter Høeg.) 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 hellish 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 trivival language. This is particularly true for Hannah whose ideas 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. END
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Summary: Who would bother to answer a review like this?
Review: For the most part -- the incomplete sentences notwithstanding -- I was mildly enjoying this book, but the repeated inconsistencies with serial commas and the misuse of the word 'hopefully' eventually wore down my tolerance. I stopped on page 385, where the most egregious example of his grocery-list style stopped me and sent me looking for better prose than his.
Rating:
Summary: I got sucked right in...
Review: It surprised me to see so many readers pan this book. I loved it! I've read almost everything John Irving has written. This book isn't Cider House Rules, but I thought it was great. Maybe I'm a sucker for a great love story. I didn't approach this book predisposed to loving it, either. I was very disappointed with Son of the Circus, where I kept hoping after each page that that Irving magic would kick in and it never happened. I loved the characters in this book, and it had that slight (or not so slight) twist that Irving puts on his world that makes you sit up and take notice of everything going on in it.
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