A Widow For One Year by John Irving
A Widow For One Year by John IrvingComposing a novel, is like the construction the interior architecture of the house you live in. Other people will pass through and say, ‘Oh, it’s a nice house but what a hideous window over the kitchen table.’ Only a writer really lives in a novel. So much of what works best about it are things that people who come to dinner never know about or see”(Interview 1). John Irving is an author and a master storyteller who illustrates his vivid tales through detailed and exact writing. John Irving’s A Widow For One Year is an intricate narrative of several love stories. In the opening scene, Ruth Cole, the main female character, at age four, walks in on her mother, Marion, and Eddie, a sixteen-year-old, having sex. This novel is divided into three sections about Ruth’s life: her childhood in the Hamptons, her success as an author, and her experience as a widow on the verge of falling in love. The story begins in the summer of 1958, during a failing marriage between her parents, Ted and Marion. The second section of the book occurs in 1990, while Ruth Cole, a famous novelist, is on tour. The third and final segment of the book happens in 1995, where the turmoil in her life is resolved and “everything” falls into place. In this novel John Irving incorporates many of his own experiences into the story line. John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. He later attend Exeter academy and has written many successful novels. Mr. Irving is a well-recognized author because of his meticulous writing style and his in depth portrayal of characters and story line. Critics praise the “old-fashioned” yet modern style of writing that John Irving creates in his novel with his intricate plots and twisting love stories in A Widow for One Year, though many say that the extent of his gruesome depictions of sex scenes take away from the quality of the book.
The critics from the Kirkus Reiew, the Los Angeles Times, Salon Magazine, and the Washington post commend Irving’s brilliant descriptions of love in the novel. Ruth Coughlin from the “San Francisco Chronicle” says “…A Widow for One Year, his (Irving) most intricate and fully imagined novel is a compelling composite of love and loss…”(Coughlin 1). William Pritchard of the “The New York Times Book Review” states that, “…A Widow for One Year is a grand celebration of the forces of love and hope over grief and despair…it is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force”(Pritchard 2). Michiko Kakutani of the “Los Angeles Times” describes the novel, “… Irving’s own storytelling has never been better. In fact, his authoritative narrative steamrolls over the contrivances, impossibilities and antic excesses of his story to create an...
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