Rating: 
Summary: Rainbow comes after the rain
Review: I had the pleasing experience of reading this book in English, which gave me an incredible satisfaction. Im not a native English speaker, and sometimes, or most of the times, reading fiction in another language is not that easy. It can be even frustrating for the fact that you have to look up words in the dictionary every 2 minutes and so you lose the thread of the story, being obliged to focus on understanding the words.This did not happen with John Irving's book and I must say Im very glad I understood 90 % of the story without using a dictionary.(Warning: plot elements revealed from this point on) There are a lot of things in this book that are intriguing to me: Ruth is a very famous writer, who doesnt seem to need a rich life experience in order to be a successful writer. From my point of view it is questionable how she can write about such issues (marriage, divorce, birth, motherhood, death)and be so successful, without having lived at least one of those moments. The only real 'research' she does for her book is watching a prostitute in Amsterdam while she was with a client and so she becomes the witness of a murder. That moment she makes an interesting remark: "The conventional vision is that prostitution is a kind of rape for money; in truth, in protitution - maybe only in prostitution - the woman seems in large". This is a good point about what is like for a woman to live in a sexist society, where only men can have a sexual history and women are sometimes judged by their physical appearance. But I dont think Ruth is a very oustanding character. If I have to compare her to her best friend, I think that Hannah is more interesting, warm and friendly. Hannah seems to me the most vivid and funny character in this book. She is somehow vulgar and has in mind sex and lovers, but she shows a certain frankness and curiosity that not many people have. She has her sad story too, as 'real love' is late in showing up for her. At the other side is Ruth, down to earth, cautious, famous, a bit distant, who gets married not because she is madly in love with Allan. No, she marries simply because she thinks that Allan is the right guy for her, the one who can take good care of her, despite the fact that she hates the way he eats or she doesnt seem to enjoy sex with him so much.
Important changes occur in her only after Allan's death - she is more mature, knows what she is looking for, which finally concludes in finding real love (she falls in love with Harry) and having a happy marriage. It is interesting that we have 4 writers in this book, among which only Ruth is the well known among readers. Ruth writes out of her imagination, Ed can write only from his own experience and is uncapable of imagining anything - at least he is a good guy, a reliable and trustworthy friend. Tom's stories for children are in fact stories for young mothers - his main targets. Marion writes out of sorrow and grief for having lost her two sons. Speaking about Marion, I keep wondering how she could have left her daughter and show up again out of the blue, after more than 30 years, not because she wanted to see her daughter and grandson, but because she found out that Ed was still in love with her. I admire Irving's talent for getting into his characters' minds and telling us about everyhting they think. He is very good in making us see through their eyes. But I think that the book is also about finding your way in life, being happy with yourself and coming to terms with the misfortunes in life. This is what finally happens to Ed, Ruth and Marion who seem to have found what they were looking for - a normal, peaceful and happy life after pain.
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated Irving
Review: I love the writer but do not love what he's written here. The story never gets up to speed. The characters do not "live" the way they do in Irving's better books (see Hannah and the adult Eddie O'Hare). "Widow" is a series of episodes which culminate merely with a couple of lives having been lived; I know this is what life is about, but not great fiction. Irving has done much better, especially with "Owen Meany" and "Garp".
Rating:
Summary: Not Irving's best
Review: A Widow For One Year takes us into the lives of Eddie O'Hare, a teenager on the brink of manhood, and Ruth Cole, the daughter of a novelist who turns into a novelist herself. At sixteen, Eddie is offered a summer job by Ted and Marion Cole, and goes to spend two months with them and their four-year-old daughter, Ruth. Through the summer, Eddie falls in love with Marion, who is eagerly giving him a sexual education, and Ruth is caught in the middle off a bitter but unspoken battle between the philandering pornographer Ted and the obsessed and depressed Marion, who is still heartbroken over the loss of their two sons in an auto accident. The novel follows Ruth and Eddie at later ages, both novelists, as they struggle to make sense of their lots in life, and find their "fictious" works heavily influences by their own experiences. By the end of the novel, we've seen suicide, murder, marriage, divorce, death (by neither suicide nor murder), virginities lost and hearts shattered. As always, Irving is a fabulous descriptor, and second-to-none when it comes to delving into the heads of his characters and making us see things through their eyes. There is always the sense, no matter how ridiculous the situation happens to be, that it could happen, just because of Irving's descriptions. And it's strange, in a novel where four main characters are novelists and express concern over making too much of their fiction based on real life, the question of where Irving got his inspiration for the novel never entered my mind. It always felt, to me, as though the novel were an entity in an of itself -- almost removed entirely from its author. To be able to do that is a rare gift. On the downside, there are many plot holes and absurdities and just plain old anti-climaxes in this novel to warrant, I think, a poorer rating than some of his other works. The description above is, in all honest, probably more interesting than the novel actually is. At 537 pages, A Widow has plenty of space to drag, and it does. It's not that there is an extended period of time where nothing happens, but there are extended periods of time where nothing important happens -- entire subplots and situations are introduced which have no clear purpose or long-term relevance. At one point, there's a marriage, which would seem like an important plot event, but the guy dies -- without us having even known him -- in the next chapter. Worst of all, the death doesn't even seem to affect the widow. Why did she have to get married to somebody she doesn't care about, if she was going to be single at the beginning of one chapter, and single at the start of the next, and isn't going to learn anything in between? There's another plot turn, a murder, which serves only to introduce another character at the 400th page. I'm still trying to figure that one out. And, despite Irving's most convincing writing, there are some situations which stretch credibility. I wasn't able to quite buy a 90-year-old doctor performing births and abortions in The Cider House Rules, and I'm completely bewildered at why a mid-30's woman would choose to have sex with a 77-year-old man (and how he could have sex at all), or how a 52-year-old man would fantasize about the breasts of a 76-year-old woman. Perhaps he's not being entirely seriously, or perhaps I'm out of touch with aging. Also, some of the love situations seem a little trying. Every character who does seem to fall in love in this novel seems to fall into it as a last resort, with a sort of best available alternative attitude. For a love story, there really aren't two characters in this story who demonstratably belong together, not two characters who have a real strong emotional attachment to one another. It was the same problem he had in The Fourth Hand, where the main character just sort of decides on the spur of the moment who to stay with because he doesn't have any other real opportunities. But perhaps I'm alone in feeling that's a little anticlimactic. In any case, I'd recommend picking up A Prayer For Owen Meany or The Cider House Rules before this one. Matty J
Rating: 
Summary: A 4.5 star read by Irving
Review: I'm a friend of modern classics. I feel this is destined to be one of them. John Irving has a knack for taking you inside the world of his characters, a world often bizarre at best. Just at the edge of "believeability", he manages to make you part of his worlds. It was true in Garp, it is true in Widow for One Year. Ruth Cole, her best friend Hannah, and even the pitiable Eddie grow on you. You become invested in their lives, to the point where you want to know more when you turn that last page and find it is over. Egotistical it may be to write a book about writers, but the references, the satire, and the intimate feel make this book darkly comical and distinctly social. I recommend this book to anyone who likes to consider their world while reading, and afterwards.
Rating:
Summary: A Widow for 600 Pages
Review: ... this is not Irving's finest work. But the great thing about Irving is that even when it's not great literature it's usually still a good read. The first & last act (it's divided into three acts) are fabulous. The middle lulls, but just when I was about to give up on it, it became fascinating again. I give it four stars for a 5-star 1st & 3rd act and a 3-star 2nd act. ...
Rating: 
Summary: One of those books you wish would never end.........
Review: and considering that the paperback edition is 650 pages, that's saying alot! And yet, when I reached the final page, I really wished there was more to read.....that I could continue to follow Ruth and Harry as they embark on their new marriage, or Eddie and Marion as they continue their unusual, but loving relationship, or even to see what Hannah would do in the midst of all these seemingly happy relationships. This is just a big wonderful book, which is full of funny scenes and some very sad ones as well. It is also a book which will be very appealing to people who love to read, as there are great quotes from the classics, Irving shows his appreciation for readers. He also gives us a very interesting insight into different types of authors and their varying degrees of success and what that means to their lives. I really just loved this book.....and have raved about it so much that I'm giving a copy of it to one of my friends tomorrow and another friend is already waiting to read it next.
Rating:
Summary: More brilliance by Irving
Review: So far, I've enjoyed everything I've read by John Irving, and this novel was no exception. I'm not going to say that it ranks up there with Cider House Rules, but still, it's brilliant. Irving is a wonderful storyteller. He also has this incredible ability to draw each and every character (and there are so many!) so completely. It's mainly the story of Ruth Cole, a young girl who grew up with her father, after her mother left her at the age of four. The other main character in this book is Eddie O'Hare, whom, at the age of sixteen, fell forever in love with Marion (Ruth's mother), just before she abandoned her daughter and husband. There are lots of other characters and substories, which all tie and untie throughout the novel. There are many Irving-like forshadowing elements, twists and turns in the relationships which evolve over thirty-something years. The story takes you beyond the Atlantic Ocean to Amsterdam, where even more new characters enter the picture. Of course, the novel is filled with dark humor in relation to life growing up in New England, being a writer (I love his constant remarks about how the literati look down upon autobiographical or "real life" fiction), being married, being single, etc. I enjoyed being reminded of some of his other works. For example, he described a story that Ruth Cole wrote, which bore a striking resemblance to Cider House Rules, and again there was reference to a story which sounded a lot like The World According to Garp. These are just little things though. Another aspect of this novel that I enjoyed was that the characters were a little older than those I've read recently. Most of these characters are in their late 30s, 40s, upwards to 70s. It's a nice change to read about this group of people and their issues. A great read. Once again, I couldn't put it down and was surprised many times throughout this novel. The end slowed down a bit, yet Irving even managed to insert something absolutely poignant in the very last page. It's wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Summarizing Review
Review: John Irving's A Widow for One Year is the tale of 37 years of Ruth Cole's life, and the eccentric characters who impact it. It begins when Ruth is only four, living on Long Island as the child of separated parents. We first meet young Ruth when she walks in on her mother's affair with her father's 16-year-old writing assistant, Eddie O'Hare. Her mother, Marion Cole, has yet to come to terms with the deaths of her first children, two boys who died before Ruth's birth, and is drawn to the similarities between Eddie and her dead sons. Eddie, truly doting on his lover, 23 years his senior, will never forget his first relationship with an older woman, as we learn later in the story. By the end of the summer, Eddie has learned the stories of the many pictures of the dead boys that line the walls of the home where Ruth lives. When Marion leaves home at the end of the summer, she leaves behind her daughter Ruth, who is unable to remember her, her philandering husband, Ted, who, though untrustworthy as a man, is doting to Ruth as a father, and lovestruck Eddie, who later is Ruth's only connection to her lost mother. In leaving, she takes the pictures of her dead sons, leaving Ruth and Ted with only their stories to remember the boys by.
In the next stage of Ruth's life, she is a successful novelist, though her relationships with men are much less successful. She meets Eddie, also a novelist, though not nearly as successful, and the two become close friends, bonded by the one thing they have in common, Marion. Eddie's novels focus on relationships between younger men and older women, as does his love life. Still pining away for Marion, however, he discovers that she too had become a novelist, though she writes using a pen name to prevent being discovered. Ruth and her best friend are a picture of opposites, as Hannah is outgoing and promiscuous, while Ruth is unsure of herself with men. Ruth is hurt by her friend's affair with her father, and leaves for a European book tour, deciding once and for all to rid herself of bad boyfriends and marry her publisher, who is in love with her, though she is not as sure of her feelings for him. In Amsterdam, she is the witness of a prostitute's murder, though only through embarrassing circumstances. Upon returning home, she marries and settles down with a son, but her tranquility cannot last.
Ruth's world is once again disrupted by the death of her husband five years later. After being a widow for one year, as the title suggests, she decides to reenter the world, and on a second European book tour celebrating her newest novel, My Last Bad Boyfriend, she falls in love for the first time in her life. The novel ends with the resolution of Marion's disappearance, as well as the final sale of the Long Island home, which Ruth has been anxious to rid herself of.
This novel is both entertaining and engrossing. Fans of Irving's writing will recognize common settings, including the red district of Amsterdam, Exeter, and a version of New York City where the technology of the nineties is present, but ignored. There is also other writing sprinkled inside the novel, as all three Cole's are published writers. Though a slower read than some of Irving's other novels, the depth of the characters and their stories is vividly realistic. In reading this novel, there is the ever-present feeling that we are spying on real people, though we are allowed to see their thoughts and feelings as well as the actions that shape their lives. It is a very good read, highly recommended. Though its length may seem at first daunting, the speed with which the story picks up and the captivating plotline will fascinate even the most hard-to-please readers.
Rating:
Summary: Irving speaks to his readers
Review: My take on this book is that Irving is speaking to us via the main character, Ruth Cole. She reminds us in many instances that an author is not to be so easily judged by what his/her characters do. They are the author's characters and will do whatever the author wishes, but this cannot be assumed to be an endorsement of any particular political point of view. I think Irving was writing to make this point throughout the book; it's just a story, and the characters make decisions that have life-altering impacts, but it's just a story that follows it's characters to whatever ends their choices lead them. I loved the book not really because of my take above, but because every few pages Irving tosses in something that is spectacularly thought-provoking. The book was well-plotted, and you did wonder how it would end. The characters learned lessons and lived their lives. Along the way, Irving was able to give you something valuable to think about at every turn. I value that greatly about all his writing.
Rating:
Summary: The Best
Review: Buy it. Read it. Love it. I did and so will you. IMHO, this is Irving's best work. Yes, better than Garp.
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