Product Description

John Irving's most successful and widely-acclaimed novel since A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28495 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 667 pages

From the Back Cover
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. Her story is told in three parts, each focussing on a critical time in her life. When we first meet her - on Long Island in the summer of 1958 - Ruth is only four.

The second time we meet Ruth it is 1990, when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgement in men, for good reason. The book closes in 1995 when Ruth is forty-one years old, a widow and a 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 multi-layered 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.

About the Author
John Irving
John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942, and he once admitted that he was a 'grim' child. Although he excelled in English at school and knew by the time he graduated that he wanted to write novels, it was not until he met a young Southern novelist named John Yount, at the University of New Hampshire, that he received encouragement. 'It was so simple,' he remembers. 'Yount was the first person to point out that anything I did except writing was going to be vaguely unsatisfying.'

In 1963, Irving enrolled at the Institute of European Studies in Vienna, and he later worked as a university lecturer. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, about a plot to release all the animals from the Vienna Zoo, was followed by The Water-Method Man, a comic tale of a man with a urinary complaint, and The 158-Pound Marriage, which exposes the complications of spouse-swapping. Irving achieved international recognition with The World According to Garp, which he hoped would 'cause a few smiles among the tough-minded and break a few softer hearts'.

The Hotel New Hampshire is a startlingly original family saga, and The Cider House Rules is the story of Doctor Wilbur Larch - saint, obstetrician, founder of an orphanage, ether addict and abortionist - and of his favourite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted. A Prayer for Owen Meany features the most unforgettable character Irving has yet created. A Son of the Circus is an extraordinary evocation of modern day India. John Irving's latest and most ambitious novel is A Widow for One Year.

A collection of John Irving's shorter writing, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, was published in 1993. Irving has also written the screenplays for The Cider House Rules and A Son of the Circus, and wrote about his experiences in the world of movies in his memoir My Movie Business.

Irving has had a life-long passion for wrestling, and he plays a wrestling referee in the film of The World According to Garp. In his memoir, The Imaginary Girlfriend, John Irving writes about his life as a wrestler, a novelist and as a wrestling coach. He now writes full-time, has three children and lives in Vermont and Toronto.

Customer Reviews

Very different from a lot of Irvine's stuff - loved it
The plot is on the same scale as some of Dickens' works - it covers some thirty or more years, and conveys the subtle changes that befall the three central characters in that time.

I was at first reluctant to open this book as my previous experiences with Irving have not been entirely happy ones; I had thought him to be rather misogynistic in his portrayal of female characters, and the lack of depth that he was prepared to attribute to them. Here, however, I am glad to say that I couldn't detect it at all.

There's a real affection for the characters in the writing, and some very funny set-pieces are played out.

This edition (The Ballantyne Readers' Circle imprint) features a Q and A session between the author and his editor - not perhaps the most challenging of interviews, but it gives a fascinating insight into the way that Irving approaches writing - one thing he insists upon is knowing exactly what happens from the beginning to the end of a story before he writes any of it, and it shows in how pleasantly structured the plot feels as it progresses; as a reader one feels capable of trusting the writer to convey one to a satisfying conclusion.

And the ending is wonderful :)

good in parts
At its best, this book is very good. Up until the main character goes to Europe the story is engaging. The tragedy of a marriage breaking up and the sexual awakening of a young man are complex and well written. But, oh dear, the Amsterdam episode is unbelievable, tedious and frankly, silly.

Sorry to say not worth reading
At one time I was a big fan of John Irving, 'A Prayer for Owen Meany' remains one of my favourite novels, and 'The World According to Garp', 'The Hotel New Hampshire', 'The Cider House Rules' etc. (the film of which was dreadful incidentally) are all, in my opinion, with some caveats wonderful and original novels. However 'A son of the Circus', the novel which preceded this one, was by Irving's standards disappointing but there was enough in it to keep me reading. Unfortunately it was perhaps the beginning of the end as Irving's importance as a writer.

Nevertheless on publication I went out and bought a signed hardback of this novel. Unfortunately the bad omens signified by his previous novel were more than realised. The plot I found was unengaging, the humour laboured and unamusing, the characters uninteresting.

Unfortunately this book for me represented a complete collapse of form on Irving's part and since reading it I have been unable to venture reading his subsequent efforts. If you are new to Irving I strongly recommend his earlier novels, start here and you will wonder how the man gained his reputation.