Sarah Thoughts: This is one of my favorite books, I’ve read it at least 4 times since I got into John Irving. It’s split into three parts, the first is a sometimes funny, sometimes tragic tale of 4-year-old Ruth Cole’s broken and odd family, the second with 36-year-old successful novelist Ruth Cole and the third with recently widowed 41-year-old Ruth Cole who witnesses a crime in Amsterdam’s Red Light District and falls in love for the first time (Not with the murderer.).
Goodreads: 3.77/5
“One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole woke to the sound of lovemaking—it was coming from her parents’ bedroom.”
This sentence opens John Irving’s ninth novel, A Widow for One Year, a story of a family marked by tragedy. 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 critical 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 on the fall of 1990, when she 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.
Note: The front inner page is torn along the edge and the cover has some wear and tear.
Sarah Thoughts: This is one of my favorite books, I’ve read it at least 4 times since I got into John Irving. It’s split into three parts, the first is a sometimes funny, sometimes tragic tale of 4-year-old Ruth Cole’s broken and odd family, the second with 36-year-old successful novelist Ruth Cole and the third with recently widowed 41-year-old Ruth Cole who witnesses a crime in Amsterdam’s Red Light District and falls in love for the first time (Not with the murderer.).
Goodreads: 3.77/5
“One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole woke to the sound of lovemaking—it was coming from her parents’ bedroom.”
This sentence opens John Irving’s ninth novel, A Widow for One Year, a story of a family marked by tragedy. 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 critical 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 on the fall of 1990, when she 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.
Note: The front inner page is torn along the edge and the cover has some wear and tear.
ISBN: 9780676971941
