Review: A Widow For One Year

A Widow For One Year by John Irving
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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 focusing on a critical time in her life. When we fist meet her--on Long Island in the summer of 1958--Ruth is only four.

the second time we meet Ruth it is in 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.

To say this is a story about a woman (Ruth) who had been a widow for one year wouldn't be wrong but the book is about so much more than that. The book details Ruth's life but also covers much of her parents' lives and more. Irving includes in his book whole sections that feel superfluous to Ruth's story. He writes paragraphs where many writers would use a sentence.

I'm not sure if I think Irving is a great writer but he's definitely clever. The book isn't a page turner like a thriller would be but I did want to keep going and find out how things turned out for Ruth and the other characters in the book. He's also not shy about including details of the sexual relationships of his characters and indeed in this book there is a lot of information about the Red Light district of Amsterdam. This might not be to everyone's taste.



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