Rating: 
Summary: How interesting to condense so many stories into one novel..
Review: Why, why, why Mr. Irving would you write in such vivid detail about one summer and then scurry through the next forty years? I would have enjoyed this book had it been only about the early years of Ruth Cole's life. It seems as if the last half of the novel is simply a collection of open ended ideas and short stories portrayed through the various wanna-be writer characters that were developed soley for the purpose of tossing around plot ideas. Why so much focus on the photographs of Thomas and Timothy, so much detail so that even I can name the various poses that once hung from each hook and then...at the end of the book nary a mention of what in the heck happened to them? If a mini-series is created from this novel, Stockard Channing would make a good Ruth Cole...but I'm afraid I will not be able to endure watching this epic come to life in a made-for-tv movie as I have spent enough of my own exciting life simply reading this bizarre book.
Rating:
Summary: A Widow for One Year
Review: This book captured my attention at the beginning, and promised to deliver an interesting story of a dysfunctional family and the strange cast of characters involved in their lives. I zipped through the first half of the story, as it was engaging and interesting. Ruth Cole and Eddie O'Hare form the core of the story, as Eddie (a young, aspiring writer who takes a summer job working as a writer's assistant to Ruth's alcoholic father, Ted) gets involved in a sexual relationship with Ruth's mother. The impact of this interlude on all of the characters echoes throughout their lives. However, Eddie's undying love and devotion, decades (and many, many pages) later, is a little too much for the reader to believe (or care about). Ruth's relationship with her best friend, Hannah, is bizarre and unfounded, and exemplifies the weak character development that is encountered throughout the book. No one can say that John Irving's writing in general leaves anything to be desired, but this story left me cold. The plot, well developed in the first half of the books, plods through the second half, and the ending was boring and predictable
Rating: 
Summary: Brialliantly read, an unbelievable story made real
Review: I noted that other reviewers loved or hated this book. It is long, but paints picture in the mind's eye worth seeing. It is the journey through the story that makes it a pleasure rather than cathartic moments. The tone, rhythm and voice of the narrator truly make this book on tape a masterpiece. I would listen to it again.
Rating: 
Summary: There's Nothing Better than a Good Book
Review: I threw down Franzen's The Connections and Delillo's Underworld in disgust, after an hour's hard effort each. I had a bad cold and was looking for the company of a good book to help distract me. I should have known that John Irving is always good company. That's what I always look for, the august company of a good storyteller who is going to do just that "tell me his story." Don't miss this book. It has it all, good story, good characters, enough mystery and anticipation to keep looking ahead, enough sex to be contemporary, enough surprises to wake you up out of your own stale conjectures, some warm comedy to be good company, some real tragedy to touch the heart. And I think it taught me a lot that I can use in writing my own novel. Then for fun I logged on here to read some reviews. I had to laugh at the supercilious statements of some of the editorial reviewers who are grasping at straws trying to find something to criticize. Got pen? I'm serious about this being a good guide to how to write a novel--it's in the very bones of the book. I got a six-figure advance for my first non-fiction book, Depression is a Choice, published by Hyperion, and now I am starting a novel myself, which probably I will have to sell under a pen name since it is hard to be a cross-over author. Before my non-fiction sale,I was already an author of 5 children's book which I downplayed as "self-published," in order not to be typecast. And before I was a book author I was and still am a cognitive behavioral therapist. I toy with the idea sending my first 50 pages to this author for his remarks but of course I wouldn't presume to do so. I'll just struggle along like every other author has to do. Win by the word or lose by the word--a mind in the hand of fate. It is a worthy path.
Rating:
Summary: great story brought full circle in classic Irving style
Review: A Widow for One Year is John Irving at his best. The story trails Ruth at three different stages in her life: as a 4 year old, a young woman, and a fortysomething. Ruth is born into a family in stages of turmoil: her famous writer father Ted cheats on her beautiful lonely mother, Marion, who starts an affair with his 16-year-old assistant Eddie, who never gets over Marion even as he befriends Ruth in her later life. All of this stems from the fact that Ruth had two older brothers who died a tragic death years before she was born. As Ruth grows up and becomes a writer herself (as does Eddie), their lives intertwine and relationships with her father and other characters develop, including an interesting terrifying episode in Amsterdam. Like in "The World According to Garp", which also featured a character who was a writer, Irving takes the writer's own fiction and injects it into his own text, so there is a story-within-a-story, but it all connects and makes the book even richer.
Rating:
Summary: Irving's Mid-write Crisis
Review: To be plain and simple about it...this is hardly one of Irving's greatest accomplishments. It doesn't even touch "The Cider House Rules." Don't get me wrong, I finished the book and managed not to be thoroughly disappointed...but one thing is for certain, it did not leave me in anticipation every time I put the book down. While there is no doubt that John Irving is a talented (if not brilliant) literary novelist,this saga of the life of Ruth Cole was slightly better than luke-warm.
I'd have to say that Irving should have spent less time with incessant detail and more time with raw emotion...I saw little of that here.
In a nut shell, I found this novel to be somewhat predictable...and without trying to sound ridiculous, it seems more like it would have been written by Danielle Steele.
Rating:
Summary: Classic John Irving
Review: The book held my attention until the last 30 pages or so. At that point the author seemed to be grasping for a way to re-introduce a main character by going into minute detail about the mundane life of another central character. I felt that it dragged on at that point. Overall, a good read.
Rating:
Summary: Characterization through sex, interesting approach
Review: Even though this book is drenched in sex, it is not about sex, at least in its more common role of titillation. Rather, the sexual desires and acts of the main characters are used to reveal each person. Sex is the (mostly) sordid backdrop to the real story. Which leads to the question, what is the real story? Certainly it is about Ruth Cole becoming a woman. She is introduced to us as a four year old child when she is an innocent bystander to the train wreck of her parent's marriage that summer. The story then resumes thirty-two years later, when Ruth is a successful writer known throughout the States and Europe. She works through many life themes in her books, without actually experiencing them, until she has her own series of transformative experiences. After detailing the critical event of her childhood, the remainder of the book follows Ruth's journey. But as rings form around a stone tossed in a pond, other stories encircle Ruth's. Ruth's parents each have their own unbearable grief that mark Ruth's life like bookends. Her two closest friends, Hannah, and then Eddie, are also laid bare. Even her father's gardener has a story to tell. Like many of Irving's books, this one also contains an unbearable tragedy at its center. While the wounds fester for much of the book, they are eventually abraded and allowed to begin to heal. If you are a fan of Irving, you will not be disappointed with this book.
Rating:
Summary: Characters, Plot, Humor, Tragedy, Life - Fantastic Story
Review: In this fascinating story, John Irving's amazingly quirky imagination and incredibly solid storytelling are on great display. We live through the lives of the Cole family from 1958 to the mid-90's through tragedy, divorce, bad relationships, hysterical bizarre situations and exotic European locales. Irving has the ability to develop characters through actions and thoughts until they are as real, warts and all, as any real person can be. Like a roller coaster, he also leads the reader through a complex and constantly evolving plot, with twists and turns that are happy and sad and tragic and ridiculous. I loved Marion as a characte because she was so mysterious and so sexy. I loved Ted because he was basically an immoral guy, but still strangely likeable. Ruth was an interesting character because of her fame and her work as a writer. In a way, I felt that I was getting insights into how Irving writes as I read about her. The other characters, from the clam truck driver, to Minty to Penny, the frame shop owner were tremendously imaginative and fun. My only criticism is that after Marion leaves, Eddie becomes disconnected from the story. We look in on him occasionally, and he has to stay involved so that Marion can return, but otherwise, he isn't as interesting as he was in the beginning. This is one of the finest novels I've ever read. Fantastic.
Rating:
Summary: LOVED IT
Review: This book is subtle. It is definately not boring. Yes, the different sections of the book were very different - that's the point! I liked Ruth and the writer theme. I have dearly loved some John Irving (Garp, Hotel New Hampshire, Cider House Rules), not gotten through others (Son of the Circus) and been left cold by others (Water Method Man). I found it very insightful, intelligent, creative, poignant and funny. I loved it. I plan to read it again.
|
