A Widow for One Year

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Summary: Will someone help me get this book?
Review: Dear Amazon

I live in Goa, India and I have been trying to get this book for almost 1 year now. The distribution of this book in India has been appalling! Shame on whoever is in charge!

What I would like to know is, how are deliveries done to India? First of all do you take orders from India at all or not? How long a wait for the deliveries etc.

About all other books by John Irving: he is fantastic. The best ones have been `Garp' and of course, if I am allowed to be partial, Son of the circus. Keep writing, Mr Irving but do bloody make sure people can get the books!

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Summary: This book is a remarkably great "listen" on audio
Review: This is definitely the best book I have listened to on tape this year. George Guidall is a great reader, and he has just the right tone for this novel. The plot, the characters, the settings, are all exquisitely developed in perfect Irving-esque style - with humor, with pathos, with love. His images will stay with you forever - the absent photos of the dead brothers, the plaintiff Ruth demanding of Eddie, "WHAT DID YOU DID WITH THE FEET?", the amazing detail of the murder of the prostitute, the scenes in the squash court - this is truly a brilliant book. I love the way Irving goes back and forth in time, so you know the chapter headlines of what will happen, but wait eagerly for the plot development and the details to unfold. I think this is his best since GARP, and I highly recommend listening to it on audio if you have a lot of driving, walking, or exercising to do - you will be finding excuses to put the tape back in to see what happens next!

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Summary: Wonderful book about very interesting characters
Review: Beautifully written about a group of people you like and you dislike. But their stories are always interesting and entertaining. Richly detailed like The Cider House Rules, but not as humorous.

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Summary: I shed no tears leaving any of these characters...
Review: Unlike such favorites as Homer Wells, Dr. Larch, Owen Meany and Hester the Molester, I felt no emotional attachment to any of the characters in this story. In fact, I didn't even like any of them. One of the things I appreciate most about John Irving is his character development. I was saddened by the fact that none of these characters endeared themselves to me. However, I do recommend the book, because I thoroughly enjoyed the suspenseful story that unfolded - I could not put the book down. John Irving continues to be my favorite author and I consider him a genius. I commend him for the risks he took in A Widow For One Year and for introducing a female main character. My final thought: Does anyone know a heterosexual male who isn't enamored by a woman's breasts? I didn't think so!

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Summary: Loved it! Great summer reading!
Review: My first experience with John Irving works. I'll definitly be reading more of his books. This one left me with breath-taking images I will never forget.

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Summary: Where's the warmth gone?
Review: John Irving is a great writer. To me, the most attractive feature of his writing is the warmth of the characters he creates - like Piggy Snead, you feel he genuinely wants to save the characters he creates from their faults and failings and so advocate the essential decency of people.

A Widow for one Year is well written, the plot is interesting (though not inspired) but what is missing is this warmth. The characters are selfish and wooden and their feelings for each other are either contrived or simply unemotional. Hannah and Ruth's friendships is simply a cliché good girl bad girl found in trash novels and sitcom TV. Ruth's love for her husbands is flat and her hatred of her father and indifference to her mother bizarre.

However more worrying is the judgementalism that has crept in. I found the repeated and explicit denigration of Ted a new and disturbing feature of John Irving's writing - OK so he was a philanderer obsessed with mothers, but so was every one else on the book - Eddy with older women, Hannah with men she didn't like, Ruth with herself. What happened to gently leading and letting the reader make their own judgements? What happened to cider house rules?

It is not clear whether this book is simply an experiment that doesn't work or whether there has been a shift in the author's humanist instincts; I'd like to think it was the former but if its the latter, John, you need to get out more and find your heart again

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Summary: I'm BORED!
Review: This is the first book I have read in a long time that I question whether I want to finish it or not??? I don't think I get it. Is John Irving redundant or what?? I wanted a story, but I keep getting the feeling that he is just trying to give us filler..... in the words of Shirley McLaine "blah,blah,blah"

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Summary: And the point is...?
Review: This book was one that I didn't want to put down because of the strange and sordid things that happened to the characters, but once I reached the end, I wondered what the point was. I couldn't identify with the motivations of any of the characters; they didn't seem to evolve much at all throughout the book.

This was the first book I've read by John Irving, so perhaps meandering is a trademark of his. In my opinion, this would be a good book to take on a long flight, but it's not a book that will change anyone's life.

Rating:
Summary: Good story but overrated novel by an irritating writer.
Review: After reading many glowing reviews I was eager to pick up Irving's latest. But I'm disappointed: John Irving is a good storyteller, yes, but as a writer he leaves much to be desired. What is it with all his italics? He uses so many italics it became irritating in the first chaper. It's like he doesn't trust his readers to know which words should be emphasized. Each page would average five words in italics. Am I the only one irritated by this? And by Irving's inevitable obsession with breasts; I find it tiresome and yes, infantile. Despite all that, his book stays with me because of the finely drawn characters: Ruth Cole is a believable heroine, and her mother, Marion, is truly tragic. The ending is poignant.I'll pass this book along to family, but with reservations.

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Summary: A Good Book - Not A Great One
Review: I suggested this book to my book club because a decade ago I became enthralled by an excerpt of A Prayer for Owen Meany in the New Yorker and I wanted to read more of John Irving.

What I like about Irving is his reverence for storytelling (and storytellers). These days when authors fall in love with the sound of their own voice, Irving seems to be the only one who actively wants to captivate his audience. As a reader, you feel appreciated and an integral part of the story.

In Widow; however, Irving has created a better storyteller that he himself - Ted Cole. The scene where Ted tells Ed the story of his sons' freakish death in total darkness ranks right up with some of the scariest campfire stories I ever heard. "Thomas had his driver's license but Timothy did not." I was breathlessly sitting at the edge of my chair and hanging on to every word during that one.

Sadly, Irving, could have taken a few lessons from his fictitious storyteller - Ted once remarked that a college student had written more pages in a thesis on one of his books than there was in the original book. Irving can't make that claim. Widow is in fact so long the Irving's beautiful prose gets lost in the abundance of it. You either read it for the plot or for the writing because you can't read it for both.

I also wanted to see how well Irving did with a female lead character. I was pleasantly surprised (this may be faint praise since the last few male authors I've read have done abominably-just read Cold Mountain if you don't believe me). But as a 37 year old unmarried woman in New York, I could definitely relate to Ruth's indecision about love, sex, marriage, children, etc.

Irving did condescendingly make her a bestselling superstar author (far better than her philandering creep of a father and better than Eddie) I could just hear him go 'O.K. let's show the women of the world that we can portray a strong, successful female.' And he instills a kind of competitiveness in her with her father that I think work better with sons. How many daughters are competitive with their FATHERS? This competitiveness in all things no matter how ridiculous is a better developed MALE trait than a FEMALE one. Most women I know just can't be bothered.

Most female readers have complained about Irving's obsession with breasts. Yes, he is obsessed. No, it's not what you think. Just read, Owen Meany, where you see an eight year old wax eloquently about the narrator's mother's breasts. Irving's obsession with breasts are too INFANTILE to be offensive. To him they represent something maternal as Ed obviously views Marion and her copious breasts.

The only character that just doesn't work is Ted. (luckily he doesn't occupy much of the story. I found Ted's tender but absentminded affection for his daughter to be out of place with his connivance to humiliate and shame young mothers. Connivance and absentmindedness rarely go hand in hand. I felt that Irving had started to make him a sympathetic but laughable character and then changed his mind. Whatever the case, Ted, as the big, bad meany just doesn't work and so his daughter's revenge doesn't invoke much sympathy.

Overall this is a good book but not a great one. A few passages will remain memorable over time but true impact of the story is bound to be lost in a proliferation of 500+ pages. I know Irving wants to be Dickens but he shouldn't try so hard.