But she is an angry, impulsive, often self-contradictory, unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career, and she distrusts her judgement in men, for good reason. And also abandons her four-year-old daughter, Ruth.īy the age of thirty-six, Ruth Cole has become an internationally acclaimed novelist. Marion Cole, a thirty-nine-year-old woman - and a faithful wife for twenty-two years - has an affair with a sixteen-year-old boy she then leaves her philandering husband. a masterpiece.” - St.Book Review: Widow for a Year by John Irving “John Irving is arguably the American Balzac, or perhaps our Dickens-a rip-roaring storyteller whose intricate plot machinery is propelled by good old-fashioned greed, foolishness and passion.” - The Nation Like a warm bath, it’s a great pleasure to immerse yourself in.” - Entertainment Weekly

“In the sprawling, deeply felt A Widow for One Year, John Irving has delivered his best novel since The World According to Garp. What’s more, there’s hardly a writer alive who can match his control of the omniscient point of view.” - The Washington Post Book World

His instinctive mark is the moral choice stripped bare, and his aim is impressive. “ characters can beguile us onto thin ice and persuade us to dance there. An engaging and often affecting fable, a fairy tale that manages to be old-fashioned and modern all at once.” - The New York Times “A sprawling 19th-century production, chock full of bizarre coincidences, multiple plot lines, lengthy digressions, and stories within stories. A testament to one of life’s most difficult lessons: In the end, you just have to find a way to keep going.” - San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle By turns antic and moving, lusty and tragic, A Widow for One Year is bursting with memorable moments.

Both elegiac and sensual, A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. In A Widow for One Year, we follow Ruth Cole through three of the most pivotal times in her life: from her girlhood on Long Island (in the summer of 1958) through the fall of 1990 (when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career), and at last in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother (and she’s about to fall in love for the first time). “ A Widow For One Year will appeal to readers who like old-fashioned storytelling mixed with modern sensitivities. Irving is among the few novelists who can write a novel about grief and fill it with ribald humor soaked in irony.”- USA Today

Widow for a year john irving review