Detailed item info | Synopsis | A novel in three sections about the life of Ruth Cole: her childhood in the Hamptons, her success as an author, and her experience as a widow on the brink of falling in love. The story begins in the summer of 1958, during Ted and Marion Cole's rocky marriage when their two sons die in a terrible accident. Ruth grows up in the shadow of the memory of the missing boys, about whom the parents talk incessantly. In the second section, the story leaps forward into 1990, when Ruth is on a speaking tour, and the action moves ahead to 1995 in the final third. This disturbing yet humorous novel touches upon the passage of time, the severity of grief, and a writer's relationship to her work. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.
| | Size | | Length: | 592 pages | | Height: | 7.0 in. | | Width: | 3.8 in. | | Thickness: | 1.5 in. | | Weight: | 10.4 oz. |
| | Publisher's Note | Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character--a "difficult" woman. By no means is she conventionally "nice," but she will never be forgotten.
Ruth's story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life. When we first meet her--on Long Island, in the summer of 1958--Ruth is only four.
The second window into Ruth's life opens in the fall of 1990, when Ruth is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason.
A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She's about to fall in love for the first time.
Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.
| | Industry reviews | "In Ruth, Irving captures the whole yuppie ZEITGEIST--the search for commitment AND adventure, meaning AND success. To be marked by love and loss and transform the pain into compelling, bestselling novels...could Ruth Cole (or John Irving) ask for more?
Nation - Lindsy van Gelder (05/11/1998)
"Irving's narrative dexterity is admirable, but eventually I yearned for the grip to slacken; by the final (1995) section, as every loose end is meticulously folded away, I was increasingly irritated by his enthusiastic telegraphing of punches. He uses flashbacks and flashes forward with equal zest, but these devices have different ontological status."
Times Literary Supplement - Eric Korn (04/24/1998)
"'A Widow for One Year', like all Irving books, is gripping and terrifying, full of horror and humour....[I]t is better than anything many contemporary writers will produce in a lifetime....the book is hard to put down, and will split your gut with laughter, and also with pain."
Literary Review - Katherine Knorr (04/19/1998)
"Reestablishes John Irving as a premier storyteller, master of the tragicomic and among the first rank of contemporary novelists."
Los Angeles Times Book Review - Joan Mellen (05/17/1998)
"By turns antic and moving, lusty and tragic, 'A Widow for One Year' is bursting with memorable moments."
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review - Ruth Coughlin (05/03/1998)
"Irving's latest LBM (Loose Baggy Monster, that is), which portrays with seriocomic gusto the literary life and its impact on both writers and their families, is simultaneously one of this most intriguing books and one of his most self-indulgent and flaccid."
Elliott
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